About this Item
First edition. Publisher s green gilt cloth, decorated endpapers. Sharp s first book, a fascinating ASSOCIATION COPY, with a wonderful story (see below), presented to fellow author Frederick Langbridge who had just given Sharp a volume of his book, "Songs of Sunshine," published in the same year (1882), and had made a request to Sharp for examples of his work to be included in Langbridge s new book he was working on, "Tablets of the Heart." With Sharp s presentation at front, one textual correction, and holograph notation inside. Written above lettering on title-page: "To Frederick Langbridge, in slight return for his charming Songs in Sunshine, W.S. 82." In a letter (published in the literature) by Sharp to Langbridge, dated Feb 12, 1882, Sharp states, "I have just received your kind letter and thank you for wishing to include something of mine in your forthcoming collection. I have ventured to mark in pencil one or two passages or poems that might suit for the department of your volume you specify.You will find the passages I have marked at 78, 106, and 175." And indeed, marginalia in the book offered here confirm this. On page 78, Sharp writes in pencil at the beginning of the text which later appears in Langbridge s "Tablets of the Heart": "If quoted, it should be accompanied by either the antecedent or following passage, to show it doesn t belong to a didactic poem, but is an interlude in a narrative poem, if one thinks it can be so called." Langbridge s book is a broad compendium of examples of well-known poets and authors of the time, including several poems by Christina Rossetti. William Sharp, sometimes writing under the pseudonym Fiona MacLeod, was a Scottish writer of poetry who later became a well-respected critic and biographer. He was closely allied to the Pre-Raphaelite movement, and especially Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Note: some of the background information found here was kindly supplied by Maura Ives, noted Christina Rossetti scholar and the author of the standard bilbiography of her work. A very good copy of Sharp s first book of poetry, with a splendid association and back story.
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