Books

First Essex House Press edition, number 79 of 125 copies only, each printed on vellum and hand-coloured. Keats's romantic narrative poem was first published in his final book Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and other poems in 1820. This was the second work in the Essex House Press Great Poems series. The Essex House Press was founded by Charles Robert Ashbee and Laurence Hodson following the closure of William Morris's Kelmscott Press in 1897 and "came from the heart of the arts and crafts movement" (Franklin, p. 64). Ashbee bought the Kelmscott Press's Albion printing presses after William Morris's death, and employed one of the Kelmscott compositors, Thomas Binning. Discreet bookplate of the noted London lawyer, golfer, and book collector Frank Robert "Bobby" Furber (1921-2016) on the front pastedown. Octavo. Original vellum, spine lettered in gilt, rose and "Soul is Form" blind-stamped on front cover. Printed in Caslon type. Hand-coloured wood-engraved frontispiece by Reginald Savage, hand-coloured initials throughout. Light soiling to boards, small patch of surface residue to front pastedown, contents clean; a near-fine copy. Ashbee, A Bibliography of The Essex House Press, p. 15; Franklin pp. 228-45; Ransom, Essex House Press 11.

The Eve of St. Agnes is a romantic poem written by John Keats in 1819, published in 1820. This poem is written in Spenserian stanzas and is considered one of Keats's finest works. It tells the story of a young lady named Madeline and her romantic endeavor on the eve of St. Agnes.