Poems: lyric and elegiac poems

Matthew ARNOLD

Edité par London: Macmillan, 1885

Spine slightly darkened, and a little rubbed at head and foot, upper cover slightly marked. Inscribed on the first blank, "Archdeacon & Mrs Farrar From their affectionate Friend G G Bradley 29th July 1885"; later (Alfred Vivian) bookplate of George Henry Wheatley, and (Alan Anderson, "Call me Ishmael", and Will Carter, blue) book-labels of the bookseller and crime writer George Sims; 4pp. publisher's advertisements at end. Macmillan first issued their three-volume "new and complete edition" of Arnold's poems, of which "Lyric and Elegiac Poems" was the second volume, in 1877; in 1885 they were offered as free-standing titles.

George Granville Bradley (1821-1903) and Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) were contemporaries at Rugby School, where the poet's father, Thomas Arnold (1795-1842), was headmaster, and then at Oxford, Bradley at University College, where he was elected Fellow in 1844, Arnold at Balliol; after Oxford, both taught at Rugby, Arnold briefly (he was elected a Fellow of Oriel in 1845), Bradley from 1846 to 1858, when he was appointed Master (headmaster) of Marlborough. In 1870 Bradley returned to Oxford as Master (principal/head of house) of Univ.; in 1881 he was appointed Dean of Westminster, in succession to his friend Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, former Fellow of Univ. (whom he commemorated in a memoir, 1883), and in 1883 Frederic William Farrar (1831-1903), a Cambridge man, remembered as author of Eric, or Little By Little (1858), was appointed Archdeacon of Westminster. Bradley's successor as Master of Marlborough, he had been appointed Canon of Westminster and Rector of St Margaret's in 1876 (in 1882 he was a pall-bearer at Charles Darwin's funeral).

In 1891 Bradley supervised the unveiling in Westminster Abbey of a bust of Arnold, his "long intercourse and intimacy" with whom dated back "to the time when I was a new boy at Rugby". "I feel confident," he opined on the occasion, "that future generations will not forget the works of one who has painted, though in the colours of his own age, the eternal thoughts and emotions of the human spirit in such stately rhythm as appealed to so many of the highest feelings of the heart. I cannot for a moment think that the author of the 'Scholar Gipsy,' of 'Thyrsis,' of 'Rugby Chapel,' of the 'Good Shepherd Carrying the Kid' . . . will be neglected by thoughtful men among generations to come."

George Henry Wheatley is probably George Henry Wheatley (1873-1946), London County Council official and son of Henry Benjamin Wheatley (1838-1917), author of London Past and Present (1891), sometime editor of Samuel Pepys and President of the Bibliographical Society. N° de réf. du vendeur 36M100010

Détails bibliographiques

Titre : Poems: lyric and elegiac poems
Éditeur : London: Macmillan
Date d'édition : 1885
Reliure : Couverture rigide
Etat : Assez bon