Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

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£ 10 000
Auction dateClassic
09.12.2020 00:00UTC +01:00
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CHRISTIE'S
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United Kingdom, London
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ID 470127
Lot 250 | Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

Wessex Poems and Other Verses. 1898

HARDY, Thomas (1840-1928). Wessex Poems and Other Verses. London: Harper & Brothers, 1898.



First edition, one of 500 copies, of Hardy’s first volume of poetry; the author’s own copy with his pencil corrections. In spite of his brilliance in prose, Hardy had always regarded the novel as inferior to poetry. Wessex Poems, with 30 illustrations by the author to accompany his poems, ‘marks the final emergence of Hardy’s primary interest, verse. The thirty years that remained to him were devoted to the composition of poetry, the resumption of works very dear to him which had been almost wholly laid aside, with the exigencies of novel-writing, since the decade of the 60’s’ (Purdy). The author’s pencil corrections, occurring on pages 119, 212, and 224, were subsequently adopted in later editions. Purdy pp.96-106.



Octavo (200 x 138mm.). Half title, frontispiece and 30 illustrations after Thomas Hardy, some full-page. Original dark green ribbed cloth, front blocked in gilt with TH monogram medallion, spine lettered in gilt (two corners trivially bumped). Provenance: Thomas Hardy (Max Gate booklabel, pencil annotations) – Frederick Baldwin Adams Jr. (1910-2001, American bibliophile and director of the Pierpont Morgan Library; bookplate, sale Sotheby’s, London, 7 November 2001, lot 496, where it was sold with an ALS by Hardy to W. Moy Thomas [now offered separately, see lot 261]).

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