SPLENDIDLY BOUND COLLECTION OF POE'S WORKS IN STUNNING ART NOUVEAU VELLUM BINDINGS

POE, Edgar Allan. Works. Chicago: Stone and Kimball, 1894-1895. Ten volumes. Octavo, original full vellum, spines and boards elaborately gilt-stamped with Art Nouveau floral designs, uncut and mostly unopened. $8500.

Limited large-paper edition of Poe's complete works, with only 250 sets printed for America, this set unnumbered, out of series. illustrated with 19 full-page engravings by Albert Edward Sterner and with 10 portraits of Poe, in elaborate publisher's vellum-gilt.

"Poe was the founder of the modern detective story… [as well as] the ablest critic of his time in America. In verse he achieved incomparable melodic effects… His influence has been incalculable in both verse and prose on later writers… 'This finest of finest of artists,' Bernard Shaw has called him" (Kunitz & Haycraft, 625). Includes Poe's tales, poems, literary criticism, and miscellaneous works. With critical introductions and notes by editors Edmund Clarence Stedman and George Edward Woodberry; Woodberry also provides a "memoir" of Poe at the beginning of Volume I. Other illustrations include portraits of Poe's wife and mother, three landscapes, and a facsimile of Poe's handwriting.

Very fine condition, handsomely bound and illustrated.