Richard Wagner and Mathilde Wesendonk Tagebuchblatter und Briefe

First edition. 8vo. 233x150mm. pp. xxxii, 366 [2]. Frontispiece photogravure portrait of Wagner, three black and white photographic plates. Gathering 20 (pp305-320) is misbound between gatherings 1 and 2. At the end are three facsimile manuscripts referred to in the letters. Loosely inserted are two photographs (Wagner alone and with Cosima) and a review of a book on Wagner and Nietzsche. Attractively bound in a contemporary Arts and Crafts prize binding by Florence Kirckelin. Tan calf, double fillets to upper and lower covers. Upper cover has a gilt panel framing the title lettered in gilt and three bars of musical notation. Spine with five raised bands, compartments decorated with a gilt border and three small gold dots in each corner. Second compartment lettered in gilt. On the hinges, parallel with the raised bands are small leaf motifs in blind. Turn-ins ruled in gilt. All edges gilt. Some rubbing to joints and to head and foot of spine but otherwise in very good condition and internally excellent. On the front pastedown is stamped "E.S.K". (Examined South Kensington) and tipped in on the front free endpaper is a label reading "First Prize Florence Kirckelin/ Section 60". A very nice, restrained example of an Arts and Crafts binding by a female art student at the South Kensington Schools (which would later become the Royal College of Art). The book for which this handsome binding was made is a collection of diary entries of, and letters between, Richard Wagner and Mathilde Wesendonk. She was a poet, five of whose works Wagner set to music (the Wesendonck Lieder). She was also married to a wealthy silk merchant who supported Wagner financially. Wagner repaid this generosity by becoming infatuated with his wife and composing an opera (Tristan und Isolde) which uses transcendental music, mythology and Schopenhauerian metaphysics to justify running off with another man's wife.…