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The Poetical Works of John Keats
John Keats
A. L. Burt Company, Publishers, New York
c. 1905–1910
Complete Edition
Sound and unmarked copy in unusually attractive supple brown suede leather covers, with “KEATS” stamped in gilt to the front. The soft suede shows expected rubbing, handling wear, and some variation in color, with curling and waviness along the overlapping edges characteristic of this flexible style of binding. All edges gilt remain attractive. Internally very clean, with a firm binding and well-preserved pages. A small closed edge tear is visible to the title leaf, otherwise the interior presents exceptionally well.
A substantial 507-page collected edition, bound in flexible suede with gilt cover lettering, all edges gilt, and silver-toned moiré-style endpapers. Illustrated with a portrait frontispiece of Keats protected by a tissue guard. The text is drawn from Keats’s own editions and other authentic sources and collated with manuscripts, with notes and appendices by H. Buxton Forman and Mrs. Keats and a biographical sketch by William Michael Rossetti. The collection includes Keats’s major poems, sonnets, Endymion, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, Hyperion, the great odes, and other verse.
No publication date is printed in the volume. Based on the A. L. Burt Company imprint at 52–58 Duane Street and the binding and production style, I would date this copy to approximately 1905–1910. This was the era when publishers produced handsome flexible-leather editions of canonical authors as affordable alternatives to more elaborate fine bindings. Keats is particularly well suited to the format: despite dying at only twenty-five, his remarkably concentrated body of work made him one of the defining poets of English Romanticism. The suede binding, gilt edges, and bright interior give this copy considerably more shelf presence than the ordinary cloth editions of the period.
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