Books

Philadelphia: James Humphreys, 1802. First American Edition. Hardcover. Wharton's name neatly excised on the blank margins of two text pages. Some staining on a few pages at the rear. Very Good or better and quite scarce. Two volumes bound in one in contemporary calf recently rebacked. The First American Edition printed from the Second London Edition and including the first printing of Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" in America. Shaw & Shoemaker, 3593. This copy sold at the George H. Conley sale, 12 January 1911, lot #1623. Armorial bookplate of William Richards Castle on the front pastedown and pencil signature on the front endpaper dated 1907 of American poet Alan Seeger who, as a member of the French Foreign Legion, was killed in action 4 July 1916 on the Somme at the age of 28. Seeger's poem, "I Have a Rendevous with Death," was the most popular and widely-quoted American poem of World War I. In 1907 Seeger was a freshman at Harvard, and Castle's son was…

Originally published in 1798 in collaboration with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 'Lyrical Ballads' is regarded as a seminal work in the English Romantic movement.