Books

Limited edition, number 22 of 50 copies printed on japon for the Guild of Women Binders and finely bound in their workshop. The bookseller Frank Karslake established the bindery in 1898 as "a way of publicising and promoting the sale of books bound by women" (Tidcombe, p. 27). As well as executing fine leather bindings, the guild had a number of fine press books specially printed for their purposes. In his introduction to The Bindings of Tomorrow (1902), G. Elliot Anstruther writes that "the Guild has no affection for the cheap edition, with its closely set type and thin paper; nor does it bind up ephemeral rubbish for treasured preservation. Materially, the books are among the finest productions of the printing press" (p. xxvi). Shelley's poem, written in response to the death of his child Will, first appeared in the collection Prometheus Unbound and Other Poems (1820). Housman's illustrated version was published in 1898. The brother of the poet A. E. Housman, Laurence Housman "established himself as a leading book illustrator" in the 1890s with art nouveau wood engravings that demonstrate "a marvellous purity of style" (Houfe, p. 346). Like Shelley, "Housman was fearless in public commitment to controversial campaigns. He was an active member of the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology and the Order of Chaeronea, and the First World War found him writing for Sylvia Pankhurst's Workers' Dreadnought and in support of Indian independence" (ODNB). Octavo. Original orange niger by the Guild of Women Binders, their stamp to front turn-in, spine lettered in gilt, foliate frame finely tooled in gilt to covers within single rule frame tooled in gilt, turn-ins ruled in gilt, edges green. Guild of Women Binders slip loosely inserted. Wood-engraved frontispiece, 11 similar plates, all after Laurence Housman, title page printed with woodcut frame, woodcut initials for first letter of each stanza. Contemporary ownership inscription to front pastedown. Binding rubbed and lightly marked, internally clean. A very good copy. G. Elliot Anstruther, Bindings of To-Morrow, 1902; Simon Houfe, The Dictionary of British Book Illustrators and Caricaturists, 1982; Marianne Tidcombe, Women Bookbinders 1880-1920, 1996.

The Sensitive Plant is a lyrical poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley that tells the story of a Sensitive Plant in a garden and uses this as a metaphor for a philosophical reflection on the relationships between life, death, and rebirth, and the transient nature of beauty and happiness.