The Complete Poetical Works of Shelley. [Cosway].

BYSSHE SHELLEY, Percy [Cosway].

Item Number: 122526

Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1904.

Octavo, bound in full crushed morocco Cosway-style binding by Bayntun-Rivière. Front and rear panels with single gilt filler border, upper cover set with an oval miniature painting of Percy Bysshe Shelley, spine in six compartments with five raised bands, a decorative panel in the rest, gilt tooling to the front and rear panels, board edges gilt dotted, turn-ins gilt, doublures and free endpages of watered silk, all edges gilt. Edited by Thomas Hutchinson. In fine condition.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets, and is regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language, and one of the most influential. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not see fame during his lifetime, but recognition for his poetry grew steadily following his death. Shelley was a key member of a close circle of visionary poets and writers that included Lord Byron, Leigh Hunt, Thomas Love Peacock, and his own second wife, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Cosway bindings (named for renowned 19th-century English miniaturist Richard Cosway) were popularized, if not invented, in the early 1900s by the renowned London bookselling firm of Henry Sotheran. The earliest Cosway bindings were created by Miss C.B. Currie who faithfully imitated Cosway's detailed watercolor style of portraiture from designs by J.H. Stonehouse, Sotheran’s manager. These delicate miniature paintings, often on ivory, were set into the covers or doublures of richly-tooled bindings and protected by a thin pane of glass.