POEMS AND VERSES 1887-1897

First edition. Signed by the author. Contemporary full vellum by Birdsall, the upper and lower boards ruled in gilt with decorative corner pieces, the title in gilt to the upper front board. Gilt inner dentelles. Marbled endpapers. All edges gilt. A near fine copy, the binding square and firm with some toning and dustiness to the vellum. The contents, with a little toning to the edges, and the corner of a photograph to the front endpaper, are otherwise clean throughout. Loosely laid in is a printed poem 'A Dream', on a single folded sheet of paper, the cover printed 'In Memory / May 9th, 1914'.

Inscribed by the author in black ink on the front endpaper "Milly / from / R. L. / 1897". Reginald Jaffray Lucas (1865-1914), British historian and Conservative Party politician, was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. He served in the 3rd Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment, from which he retired with the rank of Captain and proceeded to devote himself to politics, doing duty as Private Secretary to the two Unionist Chief Whips, Mr. Akers-Douglas from 1886 to 1892, and Sir W. H. Walrond from 1895, until the Dissolution in 1900, when he was returned as Conservative member for Portsmouth, a seat which he held until 1906. As a writer he contributed articles on social subjects to journals, periodicals, and reviews, and was a published novelist and poet. This beautifully bound, privately printed volume of poems, would appear to be his first. The recipient of this presentation is almost certainly Mildred Lucas, for whom one of the poems is written.