The
Amulet. London: W. Baynes and
Son, and Wightman and Cramp, 1827. Courtesy of the
Department of Special Collections, Stanford University
Libraries.
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The Collection
Location: Green Library, Special Collections
Call Number: Not in Socrates. Accessible by item
number in the catalog of the collection.
A printed copy of the catalogue is also available in the
Reading Room of the Department of Special Collections.
Content: A collection of 1600 first or bibliographically
significant early editions of poetry published in Britain
from the French Revolution to the beginning of the Chartist
Movement. The books were chosen to complement Stanford's
already strong holdings of Romantic verse.
Major Poets
The collection includes first editions and rarities by major
figures of the period including Byron, Coleridge, Shelley
and Wordsworth.
Minor Poets
Hundreds of volumes of minor and unrecognized writers are
included in the collection. These range from authors who
were early influences on the major Romantics to those who
in turn derived their own poetic style from the leading Romantics
during the 1820s and 1830s. It is these minor poets who put
the majors into perspective and provide the background against
which they were working. The texts are also interesting for
what may be learned from their dedications, notes, and subscription
lists, which contribute to an understanding of the sociology
of the literature of the Romantic period. The minor poets
of the period represented in the collection include Anderson,
Atherstone, Baillie, Barton, Bayly, Bloomfield, Boswell,
Bowring, Cary, Hartley Coleridge, Conder, Cottle, Croly,
Cunningham, Lady Dacre, Darley, Dermody, DeVere, Doubleday,
Ebenezer Elliott, Gilfillan, Heber, Hemans, Heraud, Herbert,
Ireland, Kenyon, Leyden, Lloyd, Lyte, Mant, Mitford, James
Montgomery, Motherwell, John Nicholson, Pringle, Procter,
Rodger, Rose, Smith, Sotheby, Spencer, Story, Strong, Tannahill,
Tennant, Thurlow, Watts, White, and Barbarina Wilmot.
Women Poets
The volumes by women represent all styles of poetry, all
classes of society, and all parts of Great Britain. Much
of the recent research on poetry of the Romantics has focused
on such women as Mary Robinson, Felicia Hemans, who outsold
all but Byron, and Joanna Baillie, who was a leading playwright
of her day. The collection contains interesting material
by all these authors, as well as other women poets including:
Anna Laetitia Aikin, later Barbauld, Miss Carmichael, Hannah
Cowley, Mrs. Grant of Laggan, Barbara Hoole, Mary Howitt,
Laetitia Elizabeth Landon, Mary Russell Mitford, Hannah More,
Lady Caroline Norton, Amelia Opie, Mary Robinson, Anna Seward,
Caroline Bowles Southey, Emily Taylor, Jane Taylor, Lady
Emmeline Stuart Wortley.
Thomas Moore Sheet Music
An unusual group of items in the collection are the fifty
musical settings of Thomas Moore's poetry, many with music
written by Moore himself. Moore was the major Irish poet
of the period writing in English--a prolific writer of songs,
epics, translations, and satirical poetry. His great collections
of song, Irish Melodies and National Airs as
well as many of his individual songs were originally published
with their accompanying musical notation in a folio format.
Moore's talents as song writer have been obscured for later
generations by the later practice of printing the words by
themselves apart from the airs to which they are inextricably
linked.
Literary Annuals and Gift Books
Annuals and gift books are well represented in this collection
with very good runs of established titles like The Amulet, Forget
Me Not, Friendship's Offering, The Keepsake and The
Literary Souvenir. There are also some remarkable rarities,
such as The Bengal Annual , which includes the poetry
of Emma Roberts. Literary annual and gift books were the
sources of poetry for the bulk of the reading public. These
volumes were aimed at the female population and included
women amongst both their contributors and their editors.
The good runs of these titles are a source for both women's
literary output and popular culture. They were also sought
after for their illustrations-- fine copper engravings often
of privately owned paintings that were unknown other than
in these small pocket-sized volumes. They are also important
evidence for the study of the history of nineteenth-century
book production and whilst some of them have been rebound
by previous owners there are still a great number in their
beautiful original bindings, in some cases even with the
slipcases.
Provincial Publishing and Distribution
The whole subject of provincial imprints has yet to receive
the scholarly attention it deserves, for it raises many questions
about the relationship between minor authors and the business
of cultural production, including the role of local printers
and the issues of print runs, copyrights, payment and/or
royalties, sales and distribution. Many of the items in British
Poetry of the Romantic Period bear provincial imprints, ranging
from Inverness to Newport, Isle of Wight, from Ipswich to
Aberystwyth. These books were printed in small towns throughout
the country-- improved transportation systems made that cheaper
and easier than previously possible. Of even greater interest
are volumes that bear the provincial imprints of local distributors--booksellers,
publishers, news agents and stationers--sometimes acting
on their own but also frequently in consort with with a head-distributor
in London. The books in this collection are a source of information
about the history of publishing and its associated trades.
The catalogue lists indices printers, publishers, and distributors.
Subscription lists
Many of the titles in this collection were published by
subscription and the lists of subscribers make fascinating
reading. Duchesses and Countesses can be found in lists along
side the author's next-door neighbors. Robert Burns subscribed
to several of the titles--in the case of Miss Carmichael's Poems for
two copies. The subscription lists offer evidence of literary
networking in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
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