Books

London: Harper & Brothers, 45 Albemarle Street, 1898. First Edition. Decorative Cloth. Fine. First Impression of the author's first collection of poems, one of only 500 copies. Crown 8vo (200 x 131mm): xi,[1],228pp, with 31 illustrations (13 full-page, including frontispiece) reproduced from drawings by Hardy. Publisher's original forest green bold-ribbed cloth, spine lettered in gilt, gilt medallion enclosing TH monogram to upper cover, top edge gilt, others uncut. Ex libris of Harald Pedersen (1888-1945), Norwegian metallurgist, politician, and Nazi collaborator. End sheets lightly foxed, else a superlative example, virtually pristine, on heavy paper, very tightly bound. Purdy, pp. 96-106. Hayward 310. Wolff 2998. Webb, pp. 97-98. Hardy considered himself primarily a poet, claiming that his extraordinary novel-writing career was the result of financial expediency. Hardy had been working on this collection of 51 poems since the 1860s. "But it was only on the cusp of the twentieth…

Wessex Poems and Other Verses is a collection of poems by English poet and author Thomas Hardy. It was Hardy’s first published volume of verse and was published in 1898. The collection combines some of Hardy's earlier verse with later poems and is notable for its exploration of themes such as nature, love, and the human condition.