Books

London: Robt. Riviere & Son, 1910. A fine example. Square sixteenmo (5 1/16 x 3 15/16 inches; 129 x 100 mm.). 46, [2, blank] pp. Title-page and initial letters printed in red and black. Handsomely bound ca. 1910 by Rivière & Son, stamp-signed in gilt on lower turn-in. Full dark blue crushed levant morocco, covers bordered in gilt surrounding an ornate floral design stamped in gilt, each with twelve inlaid red morocco flowers, spine with five raised bands decoratively tooled and lettered in gilt in compartments, gilt board edges and turn-ins, cream paper liners and end-leaves, top edge gilt. Neat ink inscription on front free end-paper and a small gold bookplate. Shelley’s poem, The Sensitive Plant, is a beautiful and tragic poem commemorating the brevity of life and immortality of cyclical nature. Written after death of his son, while Percy and Mary Shelley struggled with their grief in Pisa, the poem consists of four stanzas with three sections charting the change of seasons.…

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.