THE ALDINE EDITION OF BURNS’ POEMS, BOUND BY HAYDAY

BURNS, Robert. The Poetical Works. London: William Pickering, 1839. Three volumes. 12mo, contemporary full pebbled green morocco, raised bands, elaborately gilt-decorated spines and boards, all edges gilt. $950.

Second Aldine edition of the poems of Burns, including “Tam o’ Shanter” and “The Jolly Beggars,” handsomely bound by Hayday.

"No one even approaches Burns… in concentrated utterance of passion" (DNB). This early set brings together the hundreds of poems, ballads and songs by 18th-century Scottish poet. His poetical works, including the major poems "Tam o' Shanter" and "The Jolly Beggars," were first collected in 1800, edited by James Currie, a Liverpool physician, in order to raise funds for Burns' family. "As a poet Burns stands in the front rank… He is the poet of freedom as well as beauty" (Allibone I:303). The publisher of this edition, William Pickering, began as an antiquarian bookseller and quickly moved into publishing. In 1819 he introduced a series of small books set in small type at a price the common man could afford. These included scholarly editions of such English classics as the works of Blake, Malthus, Boswell, Johnson, Marlowe, Shakespeare and Burns (the "Aldine" edition, first published in 1830). He also issued first editions of Coleridge, as well as the first type-set edition of Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience (Geoffrey Keynes). With frontispiece portrait, a "Memoir of Burns" in Volume I; glossary and index to first lines in Volume III. Bound with half titles. Bookplates of William Court Gully, Speaker of the House of Commons from 1895 to 1905, when he was raised to the peerage as Viscount Selby; ownership signature in Volume I of his father, the noted hydropathic doctor James Manby Gully.

Foxing and marginal dampstaining to frontispiece and title page of Volume I, interiors otherwise quite clean; bindings with mild toning to spines. A lovely set.