"GRACEFUL, DELICATE AND TENDER"

HOOD, Thomas. Works. Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, circa 1860. Five volumes. Octavo, contemporary three-quarter tan calf, raised bands, elaborately gilt-decorated spines, green and burgundy morocco spine labels, marbled boards, endpapers and edges. $950.

Later edition, with engraved frontispieces, handsomely bound.

"There were two sides to Hood's poetical character, either of which would have given him distinction; but his great and unique reputation rests upon the performances in which they appeared in combination. As a poet in the more conventional and restricted sense he was graceful, delicate, and tender" while "as a humorist he was exuberant and endowed with a perfectly exceptional faculty of playing upon words" (DNB). Includes Up the Rhine, Serious Poems and Humorous Poems, Miscellanies, Hood's Own, Whimsicalities and Whims and Oddities. With additional engraved title pages in three volumes. Bookplates.

A very attractive set.