GRAY, Thomas

Odes by Mr. Gray.

Strawberry-Hill: for R. and J. Dodsley, 1757

First edition, and sole Strawberry Hill issue of the first imprint at Strawberry Hill.  Half-sheet folio, 26 x 20.3 cm overall, the pages 25.4 x 19.6 cm.  21 pages, collating [A]2, B2-E2, [F]1: [2ll.] (binder’s blanks), 1l. (half-title recto), 1l. (title recto, engraved title vignette of Strawberry Hill by Charles Grignion after Richard Bentley), pp. 5-11 (Ode), 12-21 (Ode II), [1p.], [2 ll.] (binder’s blanks), complete.  Printed by William Robinson at Strawberry Hill between July 16 and August 8, 1757 in an issue of 2,000 copies on thin laid paper with small lily watermark (visible in gutter of signature C).  Later 19th-century 3/4 brown morocco over green, gray, orange-brown and beige-yellow Stormont marbled paper, by Riviere & Son (its stamp on first free blank verso, lower left), spine in six compartments with raised bands, gilt title in second and date at foot, all edges gilt, conforming laid paper endleaves.  Francis Kettaneh morocco bookplate on front pastedown.  Very good overall, slight cover edgewear and spine wear, endpapers split in front gutter, moderate foxing and light toning throughout, trace of old fold on half-title, tiny nick in title lower right corner, otherwise no tears or repairs, an excellent, wide-margined example of a book usually found with ample faults, including defective or missing half-title and last leaf.  Hazen (Strawberry Hill) 1; Hayward 174; Northup 180; Rothschild 1067.

This first book printed at Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill Press is the first edition of Gray’s two Pindaric odes.  Finished in 1754 and 1757, they have the respective opening lines "Awake, Aeolian lyre, awake," and "Ruin seize thee, ruthless King!”  Here designating them simply “Ode.” and Ode II.,” Gray subsequently titled them "On the Progress of Poesy. A Pindaric Ode." and "The Bard. A Pindaric Ode." (cf. Poems by Mr. Gray. A New Edition., London: J. Dodsley, 1768).  Much has been made of the “first issue” textual points “Ilissus” (here, 8:17) and “Swarm,” (here, 16:19).  These nevertheless remain the same in the 1768 new edition (45:1, 62:3) and are simply the correct settings that were mis-set by Kirgate in his forged reissue on heavy Dutch paper in the 1790’s (see Hazen, op. cit., pp.[26]-[29]).  There never was a second issue of this book at Strawberry Hill; this copy is a fine and complete example of the only issue of the first imprint there.

Reference:

A.T. Hazen, A Bibliography of the Strawberry Hill Press, Folkestone: Dawsons of Pall Mall, and New York: Barnes & Noble, 1973 (Supplement to the 1942 ed. and 1973 reprint), no. 1 at [ix]-[x], [23]-[31].

Provenance:

Catalogue slip tipped to front pastedown, annotated “Bangs [Bros.] / Ap. 12 / 2100”;

Francis Kettaneh.

Detail