TAM O'SHANTER

First edition thus. Limited edition. Original vellum boards with gilt titles to the spine and a blind-stamped 'Soul is Form' rose design to the upper board. Printed on vellum, in Caslon type. Wood-engraved frontispiece by William Strang. Hand-coloured initials by Florence Kingsford Cockerell throughout. A very near fine copy, the binding square and firm with a light scuff to the upper board and some dustiness to the spine. The contents are clean throughout and without stamps or inscriptions. The slipcase is sound with light rubbing at the extremities.

Issued in a limited edition of 150 copies, of which this example is numbered 59. The Essex House Press was founded by Charles Robert Ashbee and Laurence Hodson following the closure of William Morris' Kelmscott Press in 1897. Ashbee bought the Kelmscott Press's Albion printing presses after William Morris's death, and employed one of the Kelmscott compositors, Thomas Binning. In 1902 "a bindery was established in the Guild, under the direction of Annie Power, who had been a student of Douglas Cockerell" (Crawford, p.400). The present work is the seventh in the Essex Press's 'Great Poems Series'. The illuminated initials were provided by Florence Kingsford Cockerell (1871-1949), one of the leading book illuminators of the English arts and crafts movement. Kingsford Cockerell studied calligraphy under Edward Johnston and predominantly worked for the Ashendene Press. (Alan Crawford, C. R. Ashbee: Architect, Designer and Romantic Socialist, 2005).