VERSES WRITTEN DURING FORTY YEARS.

First edition, privately printed. Signed and inscribed by the author. Original cream cloth with titles in gilt to the spine. Page edges untrimmed. Manuscript list of the contributors in the author's hand on the front free endpaper. Occasional pencil corrections in the author's hand. Additional signed 3pp. manuscript letter on mourning paper dated July 1879 from the author to the recipient of the book, George C. Brodrick, tipped-in on the dedication page. Attractive armorial bookplate of the author Edith Lyttelton Gell (Brodrick's niece) to the front pastedown. A very good copy, the binding square and firm with rubbing and marking to the boards, toning to the spine and chipping to the spine ends. The contents with very faint occasional foxing are otherwise clean and bright throughout.

Signed and inscribed by John Duke Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge in black ink to the front free endpaper "George C Brodrick / from his old friend / Coleridge / July 1879", with an additional list identifying the other contributors to the work: "R.P. is Lord Selborne / J.F.C. Lady Coleridge / J.T.C. Sir John Taylor Coleridge / Y Rev. Henry James Coleridge / J.B.S. John Seymour". A collection of verse by the Coleridge family, edited by John Duke Coleridge (1820-1894), the lawyer, judge, liberal politician, and great-nephew of the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The present copy was gifted to the author's friend George Charles Brodrick (1831-1903), the Oxford historian and Warden of Merton College. In the accompanying letter presenting the book to Brodrick, Coleridge comments on the fact that only a small number of copies of the work have been produced for presentation to friends, as well as on its contents and purpose. An uncommon title.