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First edition, and very SCARCE. One of 250 copies printed. Hard cover, 16mo, finely bound in blue three-quarter morocco gilt over marble paper-covered boards, the spine with six raised bands rolled in gilt and blind, with the title to the second compartment. All edges trimmed and marbled. Matching marbled endpapers. (2), 387, (3)pp. Printer London: C. Wittingham, Tooks Court, Chancery Lane. CONDITION: Very Good. Moderate rubbing to board surfaces, splits to head and foot of the outer joints have been repaired. Hinges in order. Foxing to prelims including title page. Otherwise, the text block is remarkably clean and bright, with only a minor blemish near top margin to pages 5-7. A former owner's name in pencil to the verso of ffep. **This work by the English AUTHOR and translator SARAH COLERIDGE (1802-1852), the only daughter of the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) and his first wife Sara, was written when she was thirty five years old. She was self-taught in the Classics, as well as French German, Italian and Spanish. As described by her relative, John Duke Coleridge, Lord Advocate of England, in the Preface to an 1874 edition, the work was written on the Author's sickbed in 1837, and consisted of "a small edition [250 copies] of a long fairy tale by an unnamed author... The few copies sold slowly, and were at length exhausted. The book has long been out of print; and even amongst men of letters, and men interested in the character and admiring the genius of Sara Coleridge, it is almost unknown or forgotten."(p. vi) He identifies the scenery in the work as that of Cumberland and West Moreland, "only under a brighter sky and with a softer climate." He concludes: "Indeed the general literary excellence of the book fits it for all ages and readers. The fairies and spirits of the book, its heroes, witches, its maidens and its kings, have been and may be again, household words with intelligent children, and may once more live, as they have lived already, in their minds, and give names and characters to their bright and pleasant play." (p. vii). "Phantasmion," can also be seen as a precursor to the fantasy genre along the lines of George MacDonald's "Phantastes" (1858), and C.S.Lewis's Narnia books. REFS: Bleiler, 246. J.D. Coleridge, Preface to "Phantasmion," (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1874.) Watson 515. Wolff 1316.
Ref: WAUTH 9276
$1850.00