Scott's Poetical Works

Sir Walter Scott - Scott's Poetical Works; Illustrated - Chandos Poets edition Hardback, no publisher information or title pages but believed to be 1868 (similar copy exists in the British Museum and can be viewed online), illustrated with 12 plates (opposite pages 34, 96, 148, 190, 225, 298, 334, 377, 443, 478, 499 and 533), original illustrations engraved by the Dalziel brothers; probably published by Frederick Warne & Co., London (again, going by British Museum copy) and printed by Savill Edwards and Co., 640 pages, no preliminaries. Octavo/8vo, measures around 7 5/8" by 5 3/4" by 2". Dark green cloth binding, bevelled boards, faded red and gilt detail tooling and stamping to front board, faded gilt lettering to spine, rear board embossed. Binding very scuffed, worn and marked. Clear signs of shelf-wear, bumped and torn corners. Tearing to head and tail of spine, considerable fading where it reads 'Chandos Poets' at tail. Binding very strained in places, some cracks to textblock, some slackness. No publisher information page nor preliminaries, apart from pastedowns and front and rear endpapers, which do not appear to be original and are made of a different and thinner type of paper to the rest of the book - it seems likely that the binding might have been repaired at some stage to fix broken hinges, which could explain absence of preliminary pages (after the repaired front free endpaper, the book begins at what is page 1). Preliminaries might have contained a frontispiece portrait of the author. Page edges gilt, scuffed but still quite vivid, though dulled on upper edges. Edges uneven due to strained binding. Marking to plate edges. The odd bit of foxing, offsetting and marking to page surfaces but mainly clean and pages do not appear to contain any underlining, marginalia, etc. See pictures for further information.