Poems by the Late Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Author of Death's Jest Book or the Fool's Tragedy. With a memoir.

Beddoes, Thomas Lovell

Published by London, William Pickering, 1851.

About this Item

First one-volume edition of Beddoe's poems. The ordinary two-volume edition is entitled The Poems, Posthumous and Collected, of Thomas Lovell Beddoes, and used the unsold sheets of two works, Death's Jest Book and The Bride's Tragedy, to make the second volume. This one-volume edition has a different title, as given here, and contains only The Bride's Tragedy as a supplement. Collation for this edition is i-ccxxiv, 1-231, [2], 177-288. In a quarter-leather binding with a leather spine and title label and paperboard sides with a design of rampant lions. Ownership inscription of the English artist Pamela Bianco ("Of Pamela Bianco / Florence 1935") on the blank preceding the title page. Possibly she had the book bound there. Beddoes is one of the strangest and most singular poets of the nineteenth century in any language. The volume was edited by Beddoes' literary executor Thomas Forbes Kelsall. "B," the author of the memoir has been identified as Charles Dacres Bevan. The lifetime years of Beddoes (1803-1849) were practically an echo of Edgar Allan Poe's, his fellow in the macabre; he was born a few years earlier and died in the same year as Poe, poisoning himself with curare. His physician father, Thomas Beddoes (1760-1808) gave lectures on anatomy and geology and was the subject of satire on account of his medico-chemical experiments and revolutionary leanings. The younger Beddoes combined a weird imagination with an interest in the biological foundations of life. As a medical student in Göttingen from 1826 to 1829, when he was expelled, he studied comparative anatomy with Johann Blumenbach (1752-1840). His range makes one realize that the fictional Victor Frankenstein was not far removed from the reality of the time. Seller Inventory # 5356

Bibliographic Details

Title: Poems by the Late Thomas Lovell Beddoes, ...

Publisher: London, William Pickering, 1851.

Binding: Hardcover

Edition: 1st Edition