The Poetical Works

London: Reeves & Turner, 1892. Third Edition. 2 vols. A reprinting of the 1839 original, the edition selected by Sangorski & Sutcliffe, England's premier bindery, as the best choice for the binding they planned, based on its typeface, paper, size, and inclusion of all the notes by Shelley's wife Mary, an essential source for the study of Percy's work. A fastidiously executed dark blue crushed morocco, gilt binding. The outside covers with central gilt panel formed by multiple plain and decorative rolls, with cornerpiece clusters of three inlaid lavender morocco pansies, front boards with central inlaid cerulean morocco medallion stamped with the poet's gilt monogram, rear boards with lavender morocco medallion stamped with a gilt pansy within the quote "Pansies let my flowers be" (from "Remembrance"), raised bands, spine compartments gilt in a latticed pattern. Inside, the Doublures are in sky blue morocco, the one at the front of the first volume is a Cosway style miniature portrait under glass, replicating the 1819 portrait by Amelia Curran now hanging in England's National Portrait Gallery, one of the few contemporaneous likenesses of Shelley and the chief source today for Shelley's countenance. The portrait is framed by a laurel wreath set with 6 jewels (3 moonstones and 3 rubies), and surrounded by a pointillé field punctuated by foliate sprays terminating in 46 white flowers, the other 3 doublures with rows of gilt floral and foliate stamps and a trio of inlaid white blossoms in each corner (the bindings with a total of 132 large and small floral inlays), ivory moiré silk endleaves, all edges gilt and delicately gauffered. Frontispiece in each volume, vignette title pages. A fine set in a luscious binding of a body of literature graced with a lyricism "unmatched elsewhere in English verse in its ethereal, ideal beauty" -Day. A clipped inscription in Shelley's hand is tipped in.