THE DEFENCE OF GUENEVERE AND OTHER POEMS

First edition, first printing. Original limp vellum with green silk ties and titles hand lettered in ink by Herbert Ellis (son of F. S. Ellis, an antiquarian bookseller who was friend and publisher to William Morris) to the spine. Deckled edges. Text printed in black and red. The first page of text features a heavily decorated border and illuminated initial by Morris, with further illuminated initials throughout. An excellent better than very good copy, the binding square and firm, the vellum with a little natural discolouration and a few light marks, the spine faintly toned. The ends of the silk ties have been trimmed or perished. The contents, with a previous owner's bookplate to the front pastedown, slight offsetting to the endpapers and a little faint toning to the margins, are otherwise clean throughout and without stamps or inscriptions. An attractive example of this wonderfully produced volume.

William Morris' first book of poetry. The collection had originally been published by Bell and Daldy in 1858 in a plain style, quite contrary to Morris' predilections, which were eventually realised in this richly decorated edition, published and printed by Morris at the Kelmscott Press. The poems conjure dreamlike glimpses of a mysterious medieval world inspired by the legends of King Arthur and his court, and informed by Jean Froissart's Chroniques, a narrative history of medieval European chivalric culture. The collection was first published when Morris was 24, and many of the poems were written while he was still a student at Oxford, a time when he was first exposed to Pre-Raphaelite art. Morris was particularly affected by the work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and the poems 'The Blue Closet' and 'The Tune of the Seven Towers' each reference a Rossetti watercolour of the same name. 'The Defence of Guenevere' was the first Kelmscott Press publication to be bound in vellum and the only Kelmscott publication with a hand-lettered title. One of 300 copies on paper, there were also 10 copies printed on vellum. (Peterson A5)