Book in a Box T All Started Three Days Before So Be It
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SWEET BRIAR COLLEGE LVol. XXXIVIBRARY GAZETTE2006 Book in a Box t all started three days before So be it. I dove into Christmas. We were in Manhattan the chaos and to my Ispending the holidays with my nephew’s delight came wife Susan’s sister, and I was as usual up with a very good dashing around the city in search of set of the first edition presents. I had decided to go to a of Evelyn Waugh’s bookstore that I knew downtown but famous “Sword of without much hope of success. The Honour” trilogy sole survivor of a group of secondhand of novels on the shops northeast of Washington Square, Second World War. it had long since swollen to become But the curious, a vast emporium selling used books, unexpected thing review copies, and the overstocks of that turned up New York’s publishers. I had in mind was a book in a box. finding a mint-condition copy of one All serious collectors pause over these of Evelyn Waugh’s novels, a British things. It means that someone cared novelist my nephew collects, and enough about the volume to protect clear. I had been buying books from the thought that I wasn’t going to have it with a purpose-built container. Most rare books department for over thirty much luck. The shop had a small rare often the reasons are personal: to protect years. That, plus the fact that I bought books department I had known since a family Bible, say, or preserve the book several other books that day (including my graduate school days. But recently of a family member or friend. But there an expensive first edition of the Walker the owners had expanded it and the are other reasons too. A professor at Evans’ photographs) I suspect led future by no means looked bright. I my undergraduate college had a box the manager to let me have the Keats had been there the preceding June and made for a tattered copy he had found volume at a more than reasonable price. the sight was forlorn: row after row of of the very rare first edition of Herman Merry Christmas indeed! empty or half-filled shelves and very Melville’s Moby Dick. So, like I said, Along with Wordsworth John Keats few customers. So it came as a shock everyone takes seriously a book in a box. is my favorite among the English to open the door at Christmastime to This box had clearly done its job. It Romantic poets, so I was delighted and piles of books and crammed shelves. had been through a fire, and the backing amazed to have a copy of this book. What had happened?! When I fell on was charred and water-stained. But what As I looked through it, however, I also a large batch of first editions of Henry was inside had escaped unscathed. This came to appreciate more concretely James’ novels I knew what I was was a worn, lovingly preserved copy of the winding, sometimes tenuous ways looking at. The owners of the store the first major English edition of the by which authors’ texts come down always did things on a large scale, and collected poems of John Keats. I took to us. Keats died in 1821, but this, over the summer and fall they had it to the front desk, pointed out to the the first important English edition of been buying private collections from all man there what it was, and advised his collected poems, was published over the United States. The immediate him to put it aside for safe keeping. He in 1841. Why the delay? The quick result was a kind of good-natured wondered if I was interested in buying answer is that he wasn’t very popular. pandaemonium. With no time to cost it, and I asked if he was kidding. No, Along with Shelley and Blake his poetry what they had, signs throughout the he was serious. The manager was away didn’t attract wide attention during store advised customers to bring to the for the holidays, but when he returned the first half of the nineteenth century. desk any books they were interested in he would price it and give me a call. The period before Victoria’s accession and the staff would give them a price. What happened next isn’t altogether in 1837 belonged to Wordsworth and Coleridge but also, in terms of book Homer” and “Ode to a Nightingale,” Ah! would ’twere so with many sales, to such now forgotten writers as these great lyric poems being brought A gentle girl and boy! Samuel Rogers and Thomas Campbell. together at last in an English edition. But were there ever any Beyond popularity Keats’ poetry was Moreover the book’s format shows Writhed not at passed joy? also tied up in a complicated problem that Keats was finally beginning to To know the change and feel it, involving its copyright. The English gain the respect denied him during his When there is none to heal it, rights belonged to a publisher, John lifetime. William Smith, the publisher, Nor numbed sense to steal it, Taylor, whose firm had gone bankrupt had gone against Taylor’s misgivings Was never said in rhyme. in 1829 but who throughout the 1830s about potential sales by issuing a cheap refused proposals to print Keats’ poems paperback edition in 1840. My copy I had never seen an edition of Keats’ because, as he told one publisher, “I comes from a deluxe edition, a “royal poems that began and ended this way. fear that even 250 [copies] would not octavo,” that Smith published the Together with the opening inscription sell.” Taylor’s continuing refusal led following year and is a good example “In Drear-Nighted December” frames to an odd situation. Because copyright of early Victorian book binding. A Keats within the Chatterton Myth. The law at that time did not apply outside small tag attached to the back cover eighteenth-century author of several Britain Keats’ poetry together with the announces that it was “bound by pseudo-medieveal poems, Thomas poems of Coleridge and Shelley was Remnant & Edmonds,” reminding us Chatterton committed suicide at the age published at Paris in 1830 and quickly of earlier days when buyers purchased of eighteen. His life and poetry fascinated appeared in a frequently reprinted books in loose softcovers and, if they Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Shelley, edition in the United States. Thus were considered important, had them and Keats himself dedicated his first Americans and continental Europeans custom bound at extra cost. In this major poem, Endymion, to Chatterton’s had access to his collected poetry a respect Smith’s 1841 edition looks memory. In his end Keats in a sense decade before Taylor finally relented forward to editions published after found his beginning, the format of this and made it available through another mid-century, when, having been first major posthumous edition shaping publisher to readers in England. discovered by the Pre-Raphaelite poets him in terms of the great Romantic We might assume that the poems and painters, Keats’ poems were often symbol of unfulfilled poetic genius. printed in this edition are pretty much printed with engravings done in the I think students should know this 1841 those that we have in twentieth-century high Victorian style. edition. There are only two copies available editions. But we would be wrong. More immediately striking is in Virginia libraries: in Charlottesville and Following the 1830 French edition the the accompanying material and the at William and Mary. So I’m happy that copy I bought printed for the most ordering of poems in this edition. there is now a third, in Sweet Briar’s Mary part only what had been published in Opposite the title page is an engraving Helen Cochran Library. book form before Keats died. Much of of a chalk drawing of Keats made by an his verse lay scattered after his death acquaintance, William Hilton. Hilton is Dr. Lee Piepho recently in periodical and annual publications best known for a oil painting of Keats retired from Sweet as well as in letters to his family and now in the British National Portrait Briar as the Sara friends. Only four relatively minor Gallery. His drawing is less well known Shallenberger Brown poems from this corpus found their way and a more modest affair but shows Professor of English into the 1841 edition. It remained for Keats before illness began to strike Literature. Professor Keats’ first real biographer, Monckton him down. The inscription below it Piepho started teaching Milnes, to sort through much of this describes the young poet as having at Sweet Briar in 1969 material, the result, published in 1848 “died at Rome in 1821 aged 25,” serving the college for as The Life and Literary Remains of and the theme of life’s transience first 36 years. He has been the past Chairman of the English Department, John Keats, increasing by over a third struck here is returned to in the last A Dupont Fellow and a Woodrow Wilson the number of his published poems. poem in the edition. Modern editions Fellow. He was twice a winner of the Sweet Nor were Milnes’ discoveries minor. commonly print Keats’ poems in Briar Distinguished Teaching Award and has Without his labors we would not, for roughly chronological order. This 1841 been awarded several grants from the National example, have “La Belle Dame Sans edition in contrast closes with a poem Endowment for the Arts and a senior research Merci” and “Bright Star,” major lyrics that he wrote in his prime of life, 1817, grant fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare absent from the 1841 edition.