[FINE BINDING] The Poetry & Poets of Britain, from Chaucer to Tennyson (1850)

Scrymgeour, Daniel. The Poetry and Poets of Britain, from Chaucer to Tennyson, with Biographical Sketches, and a Rapid View of the Characteristic Attributes of Each; Preceded by an Introductory Essay on the Origin and Progress of English Poetical Literature. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1850. [7162]

Red morocco exquisitely decorated in blind & gilt, 6 gilt-decorated panels to spine with raised bands, board edges in gilt, gilt wreath of thistle to front and back boards. 5 x 8 inches, outer hinges rubbed yet with no cracks, corner tips lightly bumped and just worn through. All page edges gilt, waxed bone-color end papers, frontispiece engraving of Sir Walter Scott with tissue guard, xxx., 528 clean and unmarked pp., tight. Small binder's ticket of Alexander Banks, Jr., Edinburgh, on a rear free end paper. Very good. Fine binding.

Scrymgeour has a brief entry in Allibone's Dictionary of Authors with the note that this volume was recommended by several authorities. This is a revised edition, the Preface notes that it has been issued "in a form more adapted to the library, or the the drawing-room table."

"The leading principle which governed the compiler in the choice of the pieces, was their suitableness for the purpose of education; but in no national poetry, perhaps, can this object so easily be combined with the selection of the pleasing and the beautiful, as in that of England. The following extracts will therefore be found to contain a large proportion of what will be read and studied, not only with instruction but with delight, while the extent over which the extracts range will furnish, to students of our British poetry, a succinct and comprehensive manual of its history and characteristics." - Preface.