SYMONDS, John Addington. Verses. [Bristol, Arrowsmith] for private circulation only, 1871.
8vo. Original blue cloth, front cover lettered in gilt; pp. viii, 100, [4, blank], even light toning, a little spotted in places only, a very good copy, presentation copy, inscribed From the Editor on front fly-leaf in ink.
Rare. - This is the poetic legacy of the father of the eponymous writer, bohemien, and advocate of homosexuality, who edited this anthology in his paternal house in Clifton. Symonds senior had been a successful medical practitioner and 'a leader of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Bristol. He bought the elegant Clifton Hill House in 1851. His reputation attracted prominent people to Bristol and Clifton. A man able to discuss Greek prosody with Gladstone and Tennyson, he frequently entertained Benjamin Jowett, Robert Louis Stevenson, Leslie Stephen, Holman Hunt, Professor James Forbes, Edmund Gosse, and Edward Lear among many friends' (ODNB). In the preface by the editor is pointed out that Symonds senior had chosen the paper for this publication, 'the type and even the binding' (p. v).
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