The Works and Correspondence of Robert Burns, Including His Letters to Clarinda; Remarks on Scottish Songs and Ballads, Illustrated With Historical and Critical Notes, Biographical Notices, &c. &c. With an Extensive Glossary of the Scottish Language; a Life of the Author; and an Essay on His Genius and Writings.

BURNS, Robert.

Published by Glasgow: Mackenzie, White, & Co., [c.1870]

About this Item

A volume of Burns's writings bound and decorated with Celtic imagery as a graduation gift for an Eton student. Included are the poet's letters to Agnes Maclehose (Clarinda), that Sir Walter Scott called, "the most extraordinary mixture of sense and nonsense, and of love human and divine, that was ever exposed to the eye of the world." (Hecht). This copy is from the library of Robert J. Hayhurst (1929-2016), with his bookplate on the front pastedown. Hayhurst inherited and improved a successful group of chemists, John Hayhurst & Son, in Nelson, Lancashire, and was an avid collector of naval history and literature in contemporary bindings. Though unmarked by the artist, a previous bookseller's conjectural note on the front free endpaper suggests this copy was at one point in the library of the painter E. A. Hornel, a Scottish Modernist part of the collective known as The Glasgow Boys. Egerer 1046. Hans Hecht, Robert Burns. The Man and His Work, (1936). Octavo (225 x 145 mm). Text printed in double columns. Contemporary green levant full morocco, spine lettered and decorated in gilt, sides elaborately decorated in gilt, blind roll to board edges and turn-ins, edges gilt. Christmas 1879 gift inscription on first binder's blank, additional ownership inscription to title page. Spine sunned, extremities bumped, contents lightly foxed, offsetting from contents page to verso of title page: a very good copy.

Seller Inventory # 181531

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Works and Correspondence of Robert Burns, Including His Letters to Clarinda; Remarks on Scottish Songs and Ballads, Illustrated With Historical and Critical Notes, Biographical Notices, &c. &c. With an Extensive Glossary of the Scottish Language; a Life of the Author; and an Essay on His Genius and Writings.
• Publisher: Glasgow: Mackenzie, White, & Co., [c.1870]