£300
FIRST EDITION, 8vo, pp. [iii]-xliv, 330, [2], [4, ads]. Untrimmed in original grey boards, printed paper label to spine. Some light spotting and foxing throughout. Front joint cracking, 4cm loss to top of spine, extremities bumped and rubbed. Subscriber’s list with several additional names added in manuscript, inscription of ‘Cloncaird’ to front pastedown.
Joanna Baillie (1762-1851) edited and published this collection to provide support to an old school friend who had been widowed with a house full of daughters; her literary connections ensured that the contributors include, in addition to her own work, some of her most famous contemporaries, among them Southey, Wordsworth, Scott, Anna Barbauld, and Schiller. The majority do indeed appear in print for the first time here.
This copy, an unusual survival in the original boards, also has its list of subscribers annotated with half a dozen additional names, with two others amended to add quantities subscribed for: the work was intended to be sold only by subscription and over 1500 individuals obliged, but the scale of the list led to delays and errors and Baillie and her sisters had to amend what copies they could by hand. (The handwriting suggests this copy was not amended by Baillie herself.) The ownership inscription indicates this emple went to Cloncaird Castle, in Ayrshire, then in the ownership of the Ritchie family, though that name does not appear amongst the subscribers.
