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First edition. Hard cover, Crown 8vo., in publisher's original "electric blue" cloth with gilt pictorial decoration, 89 pp., lacking dust jacket. All edges gilt. Printed at the Chiswick Press, London. **CONDITION: Very Good Plus. Gilt design remaining bright, spine slightly darkened. Very light shelf wear to corners and edges. Inside, light scattered foxing affects margins of frontispiece only. Tissue guard on frontispiece lacking. Most pages are bright. Both hinges slightly cracked but holding firm. Gift inscription in old ink from Christmas 1892 on half-title. Pictorial bookplate to front endpaper. POET HENRY AUSTIN DOBSON (1840-1921) did not begin his poetry career until the 1860's, but made a splash with critics, numbering Trollope and George Eliot among his admirers. His use of French verse forms struck a chord. He would go on to write a number of well-regarded biographies of English artists and writers in the 1880's. **This would have been an early display of the ILLUSTRATOR HUGH THOMSON's (1860-1920) "Cranford School" of lavishly gilt, gift book design, beginning with MacMillan's reissue of Mrs. Gaskell's "Cranford" the year prior. He arrived in London after working at publishers Marcus Ward and Company, Belfast where he trained under the artist John Vinycomb, M.R.I.A. He would go on to illustrate over 200 books, among them works by Dickens, Jane Austen and George Eliot, Thackeray and J.M. Barrie. Literature: Francis Edwin Murray (1900) p.13, No. X.
Ref: ILLDB 8202
$95.00