Books

First Essex House Press edition, one of 150 copies only, each printed on vellum and hand-coloured, this copy out of series. This is the tenth work in the press's Great Poems Series. Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" was first printed in the 1798 poetry collection Lyrical Ballads, with a few other poems. 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. In 1902 "a bindery was established in the Guild, under the direction of Annie Power, who had been a student of Douglas Cockerell" (Crawford, p. 400). The illuminated letters for this work were provided by Florence Kingsford Cockerell (1871-1949), one of the leading book illuminators of the English arts and crafts movement. Kingsford Cockerell studied calligraphy under Edward Johnston and predominantly worked for the Ashendene Press. Octavo. Original vellum, spine lettered in gilt, rose and "Soul is Form" blind-stamped on front cover. Printed in Caslon type. Wood-engraved frontispiece by William Strang, hand-coloured initials by Florence Kingsford Cockerell throughout, interleaved with 15 loosely-inserted tissue guards. Light natural discolouration to bindings, contents clean; a near-fine copy. Ashbee, A Bibliography of The Essex House Press, p. 21; Franklin, p. 233; Ransom, Essex House Press 40. Alan Crawford, C. R. Ashbee: Architect, Designer & Romantic Socialist, 2005.