New Edition, revised and enlarged, number 65 of 200 copies on hand-made paper with etched frontispieces, the first a portrait of the author by William Strang, signed in pencil "Austin Dobson." Volume one with a ticket to the verso front endpage noting that the illustrations have been "coloured by hand by Miss Gloria Cardew." In magnificent fine bindings by the Hampstead Bindery, full brown morocco gilt, upper and rear covers with one gilt fillet enclosing a bold pattern of flowers, leaves, and heart motifs, spine continuing the gilt same pattern, all edges gilt, marbled endpages. 274; 276 pp. Very fine throughout, both volumes contained in a somewhat worn custom brown cloth box.

From the library of the important American poet Frank Bidart, who received the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award, and the 2017 National Book Award for Poetry for his book Half-light: Collected Poems 1965–2016. 

A very fine set of poems by the prolific and popular poet and essayist with a particular interest in the art and manners of 18th century England and France. Born in Plymouth, the son of a civil engineer, he was of part French descent and was educated at the Gymnasse, Strasbourg, as well as the Beaumaris Grammar School, Anglesey. In 1856 he joined the Board of Trade, and for the next 45 years -- like his friend, Edmund Gosse (1849-1928) -- he pursued a joint career as a civil servant and a man of letters. He discovered his facility early: 'The student of [his work],' noted the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 'will be struck at once by the fact that it contains nothing immature: there are no juvenilia to criticize or excuse.' As a poet, Dobson's main achievement was the successful introduction into English literature of such French verse forms as the triolet, rondel and villanelle; as a prose writer, a wider appreciation of such 18th-century figures as Hogarth, Fielding and Horace Walpole through biographies which were both scholarly and accessible. He established a late-Victorian vogue for Georgian subjects, assisted by his collaboration with sympathetic illustrators such as Hugh Thomson (1860-1920), Bernard Partridge (1861-1945) and the American, Edwin Austin Abbey (1852-1911).