The Flight of the Duchess.

Campden, Gloucestershire: Essex House Press,, 1905. Ours is a great wild country First Essex House Press edition, number 47 of 125 copies printed on vellum and hand illuminated. Browning's poem was first published in its completed form in 1845 in his Dramatic Romances and Lyrics. The first nine sections were initially published in Hood's Magazine earlier the same year. It is presented here as the 14th work in the Essex House Press Great Poems Series, with a frontispiece by Paul Woodroffe, misattributed in the colophon to Will Rothenstein, the correction added on the limitation page. 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 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). Octavo. Original vellum, spine lettered in gilt, rose and "Soul is Form" blind-stamped to front cover. Printed in Caslon type. Hand-coloured frontispiece woodcut by Paul Woodroffe, illuminated letters by Raymond Binns, with tissue guards. Boards just starting to bow, faint natural discolouration to vellum, toning and some hints of foxing to margins; a very good copy. Franklin, p. 231; Ransom, Essex House Press 60. Alan Crawford, C. R. Ashbee: Architect, Designer & Romantic Socialist, 2005.