My Rare Book

My Rare Book by Frederick Wedmore

The author recounts how he acquired his copy of Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, a first edition bound in green morocco by Riviere, purchased through Mr. F. S. Ellis at Sotheby's on the 3rd of March, after it had passed from an earlier rich owner's library. He describes the auctioneer's catalogue entry and the physical qualities of the book: two hundred and ten pages, printed by Cottle on paper watermarked 1795, with only five errata and a title-page he judges finer than any modern work from the Chiswick Press or Paris. He explains that the edition has two title-pages, since Cottle, finding sales slow, sold most of his five hundred printed copies to the London bookseller Mr. Arch, who printed his own title-page; his own copy bears the Arch imprint, while the British Museum's copy, once Southey's, bears Cottle's Bristol imprint. He traces the book's origin to the Nether Stowey and Alfoxden period, when Wordsworth and Coleridge lived three miles apart in Somerset, and describes visiting Coleridge's cottage. He recounts Wordsworth's own account of the 1797 walking excursion toward Linton and the Valley of Stones, undertaken to earn money for the New Monthly Magazine, during which the idea for "The Ancient Mariner" arose from a dream of Coleridge's friend Mr. Cruikshank. He notes Wordsworth's specific contributions: the idea that the Mariner kills the albatross and is pursued by tutelary spirits, the navigation of the ship by dead men, and a couple of lines near the poem's opening, after which Wordsworth withdrew from collaborating further, finding their methods too different. He describes the correspondence and negotiations with Cottle in spring 1798, the decision to publish anonymously as Lyrical Ballads, the exclusion of "Salisbury Plain" and "Peter Bell," and the delay in completion, since the Tintern Abbey lines were not written until 13 July and the book was still only "printed, not published" by 13 September. Wordsworth and his sister lodged near the Bristol printer, and after publication in early autumn, Wordsworth, his sister, and Coleridge left for Germany. He discusses the volume's prefatory "Advertisement," written anonymously in Wordsworth's plain style, defending the poems' humble subjects and diction against readers of "superior judgment." He notes that "The Ancient Mariner" opens the volume and occupies nearly a quarter of its pages, while Coleridge's only other contributions were "The Nightingale" and one further piece; the famous prose "Gloss" was added only later, after the poem was reprinted separately. He surveys several of Wordsworth's own poems tied to specific Alfoxden circumstances: "The Thorn," inspired by a storm-battered thorn on Quantock Hill and later painted by Sir George Beaumont; "Expostulation and Reply" and "The Tables Turned," composed at Alfoxden in spring 1798; "The Last of the Flock," set in the village of Holford; and especially "We are Seven," composed in a favourite grove, with its last stanza written first. He quotes from "We are Seven" and from "Lucy Gray," and describes revisions made to "We are Seven" after its first publication, including removal of the address to "dear brother Jem" (James Tobin) and various wording changes. He notes that "Michael," a later, graver pastoral, does not appear in his copy, belonging instead to the subsequent "Lyrical Ballads, Volume the Second" of 1802. He closes with the anecdote of James Tobin urging Wordsworth to cancel "We are Seven" before publication, warning it would make him "everlastingly ridiculous," and Wordsworth's confident refusal to withdraw it.

By Frederick Wedmore · First published 1899 · Genre: Literary Criticism, Literary Essay, Literary History · 4,933 words

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I wish I could say it was my diligence that discovered it, and that I hunted it out of some fifth-rate bookstall of Goswell Street or of the New Road -- ‘all this lot at 6d. apiece. ' But no, it has no romantic story as far as I am concerned. Given perhaps, eighty years ago, by friend to friend, or lover to sweetheart, in days when our great-grandmothers were beautiful and our great-grandfathers devoted, it got to be neglected, it got to be sold -- somebody ceased to care for it, or somebody wanted the few shillings it then would bring -- somehow it tossed about the world, till a keen bookseller or keen bookbuyer rescued it, and took it to a binder of note, and then it was arrayed in seemly dress, and safer for the future. Afterwards -- but not for very long, I think -- it was a rich man's possession: one thing, and quite a little thing, in a great library of English classics, from Defoe and Sterne to Dickens and Tennyson. Then it came to be sold, along with most or all of its important companions, and so I got it, in prosaic fashion. I bought it under the hammer at Sotheby's -- or rather, Mr. F. S. Ellis bought it there on my behalf -- on the 3rd of March, in this present year of grace. And now it takes up its position on insignificant shelves, by the side of the Rogers with the Turner illustrations; by the side of a few things -- but the collector knows them not.

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book collecting · first editions · rare books · Lyrical Ballads · Wordsworth · Coleridge · The Ancient Mariner · literary collaboration · Romantic poetry · poetry history · Somerset · Alfoxden

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