“LOVE, ALL ALIKE, NO SEASON KNOWS, NOR CLYME”: FIRST EDITIONS OF JOHN DONNE’S POEMS AND JUVENILIA, 1633, IN CONTEMPORARY CALF BOARDS—THE FOYLE COPY

DONNE, John. Poems, By J.D. With Elegies on the Authors Death. BOUND WITH: Juvenilia, or Certaine Paradoxes and Problemes. London: [Miles Fletcher] for John Marriot / [Elizabeth Purslowe] for Henry Seyle, 1633. Small thick quarto, contemporary full brown speckled calf rebacked in the 19th century. Housed in a custom calf clamshell box. $52,000.

First edition of the collected poems of the greatest of the metaphysical poets, with the first edition of his “perfectly impudent” Juvenilia, bound together in contemporary calf boards. From the famed Beeleigh Abbey library of W.A. Foyle, with his bookplate.

Although his poetry was circulated in small bundles of manuscript copies among the cultured circles of Elizabethan and Jacobean society, Donne deliberately kept most of it out of print, fearing to tarnish his reputation in the religious establishment. Thus almost none of his poetry appeared in print during his lifetime. "The first editors of Donne's poetry divided his work into about a dozen groupings. The Songs and Sonnets which open the volume are generally amorous in theme; the Divine Poems, which close it, are described in their title… Early scholars took for granted that all the bawdy, cynical and lecherous poems were written by young Jack Donne, while all the somber, penitent, devotional poems were written by the godly divine. The more we learn about the matter, the less this easy division seems to stand up… The poetry of Donne represents a sharp break with that written by his predecessors and most of his contemporaries. Whether he writes of love or devotion, Donne's particular blend of wit and seriousness, of intense feeling, darting thought, and vast erudition, creates a fascination quite beyond the reach of easier styles and less strenuous minds" (Adams). "With Donne begins a new era in the history of the English love lyric… The spirit of his best love poetry passed into the most interesting of his elegies and his religious verses, the influence of which was… perhaps even greater, than that of his songs" (Rosenbach 30:127). This edition contains "the first collected edition of Donne's poems, derived according to current scholarly thinking from manuscript sources in direct descent from the author's papers. It has been the basis of all scholarly editions since then, including the Grolier Club edition of 1895" (Pirie 81), and "has more authority than any other in print" (Keynes 78). This copy of the Poems contains page 273 (Nn1) in the uncorrected state (without running title and with 35 lines of text); it is bound without the first and final blanks and the two extra preliminary leaves, and without "The Printer to the Understanders… Hexastichon Bibliopolae," not present in all copies, no priority established. Several lines in the Satyres on pages 330-31 and 341, originally containing lines offensive to the king and church, are left blank. Donne bibliographer Sir Geoffrey Keynes concludes that various corrections in the text do not differentiate earlier from later states, but were random in the preparation of the text. Donne's Poems is bound here with the first edition of his Juvenilia; the Juvenilia consist of "bits of logical horseplay, loaded with legal aphorisms perversely applied, and perfectly impudent in their cheerful, brassy assurance"' (Adams). "Owing to their rather free nature they could not be published during Donne's lifetime" (Keynes, 93). Woodcut printer's device on title, woodcut and typographic head- and tailpieces, and woodcut initials throughout. Keynes 78, 43. Grolier 100 25. STC 7045, 7043. Pforzheimer 296. Hayward 54. Front pastedown with small leather Beeleigh Abbey label of famed bookseller and collector William A. Foyle (affixed over earlier bookplate). "In 1945 [Foyle] bought the twelfth-century Premonstratensian Abbey of Beeleigh, situated on the River Chelmer, in Maldon, Essex. In this beautiful setting he was able to indulge his passion for collecting rare books, and he formed one of the great libraries" (DNB). Title page with inked owner inscription, front pastedown with inked annotations, three poems with small inked corrections in an early hand.

Light embrowning overall; title page with small repair to outer margin, a few leaves with faint waterstaining to lower portions. A desirable copy in contemporary calf of this literary landmark.