PHANTASMION.

[COLERIDGE, Sara]. PHANTASMION. London: William Pickering, 1837. 8vo, [iv], 387pp; publisher's green cloth with original printed paper label on upper spine (soiled, edges scuffed), small section cut out at top of half-title to excise name of previous owner. It is especially rare to still be in its publisher's binding and with its printed paper label.

First edition. Limited to 250 copies. This is the major contribution by Samuel Coleridge's daughter and is a rare precursor of the journey-to-faeryland that characterized the structure and content of the quest motif in nineteenth and twentieth century fantastic literature. Besides the intricacies of plot, character, and genealogy, PHANTASMION has a theme in common with Tolkien's works: the virtues of pastoralism and the disruptive force of industrialism." - Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature III, pp. 1238-40. It appears to be modeled on Edmund Spenser's THE FAERIE QUEEN (1590; 1596), the "first fairy tale novel written in English." - Clute and Grant (eds), The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, p. 210. Barron (ed), Fantasy Literature 2-28. Bleiler, The Guide to Supernatural Fiction 391. Locke, A Spectrum of Fantasy, p. 55. Bleiler (1978), p. 46. Reginald 03174. Wolff 1316. Keynes, p. 60.