Library Edition of the British Poets (40 vols)

Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1853-60. First or early printings of the Gilfillan-edited editions. Forty octavo volumes (of forty-eight issued). Publisher's embossed olive-green or deep green cloth, titled in gilt on spines. A uniformly Very Good collection; a few of the bindings are slightly spine-sunned, with contents generally clean (most volumes with text unopened); foxing, where present, is scattered and generally mild. One volume (Milton v.3) with a tiny loss to cloth at crown; another (Grahame, 1856) with a conspicuous abrasion to front board fore edge, else an unusually well-preserved collection. Original bookseller's ticket to a few volumes of S.W. (truncated) Theakston, Scarborough; one with the embossed blind-stamp of Swinnerton & Brown Booksellers, Macclesfield. Undated ownership signature to most volumes of a Catherine LeGard. Publisher's prospectuses for the series are bound in before the text in three volumes: George Herbert (1853), Goldsmith (1854) and Young (1853).

Gilfillan's monumental editorial undertaking occupied him for most of the decade of the 1850s and resulted in the first truly comprehensive scholarly compilation of English verse up to the time; each volume was accompanied by an original Life of the author or authors (not, alas, according to DNB, highly respected for their accuracy), critical essays, and explanatory notes. The series was sold by subscription, with volumes appearing at intervals, in groups of six, for the price of a guinea. Most of these would have been issued in sheets for bespoke binding, a fact borne out by the abundance of leatherbound volumes in the marketplace; well-preserved sets in the publisher's cloth are uncommon. All together, a total of forty-eight volumes were issued between 1853 and 1860, of which we here offer forty volunes, as follows:

Poetical Works of Thomas Wyatt (1858); Poetical Works of [John] Armstrong, [John] Dyer, and [Matthew] Green (1858); Poetical Works of William Shenstone (1854); Poetical Works of John Dryden (in 2 vols, 1855); Poetical Works of [Samuel] Johnson, [Thomas] Parnell, [Thomas] Gray, and [Tobias] Smollett (1855); Young's Night Thoughts [1853]; Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White and James Grahame (1856); Poetical Works of [James] Beattie, [Robert] Blair, and [William] Falconer (1854); Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles (in 2 vols, 1855); Poetical Works of William Shakespeare and the Earl of Surrey (1856); Poetical Works of [Oliver] Goldsmith, [William] Collins and [Thomas] Wharton (1854); Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott (in 3 vols, 1857); Poetical Works of Samuel Butler (in 2 vols, 1854); Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser (in 5 vols, 1859); Poetical Works of Robert Burns (in 2 vols, 1856); Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham (1857); Poetical Works of Charles Churchill (1855); Poetical Works of Mark Akenside (1857); Poetical Works of George Herbert (1853); Milton's Poetical Works (in 2 vols, 1853); Poetical Works of Matthew Prior (1858); Poetical Works of Alexander Pope (in 2 vols, 1856); Poetical Works of William Cowper (in 2 vols, 1854); Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-Known British Poets (in 3 vols, 1860); The Poetical Works of Joseph Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase (1859). (Inventory #: 81827)