Eric Chaim Kline, Bookseller

Palm Leaves [INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR]

Milnes, Richard Monckton

London: Edward Moxon, 1844. First edition. Hardcover. Octavo. 8pp (Publisher's advertisement), XXXVI, 202, [2]pp. Modern paper covered boards, with black lettering to spine. Fly leaf inscribed "From the author" to Agnes (Va?)se.

First edition of Milne's "Palm Leaves," a lucidly Wordworthian reflective poetry which consacrated its author as one of the most promising writers of his generation.

Minor and sporadic soiling to binding. Foxing to endpapers. Binding in overall good+ to very good, interior in very good condition. g to vg. Item #41417

About the author: English politician, poet, biographer, and essayist, Richard Monckton Milnes (1809-1885) is best remembered for his biography "Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats" (1848), the first biography of Keats and a work responsible for bringing about a favorable reassessment of the Romantic poet's merits. A social dilettante who held numerous dinner parties and gatherings for the intellectual and social elite at Fryston, his country home in Yorkshire, Milnes is also known for his association with several major figures of 19th-century English literature, including Thomas Carlyle and Algernon Charles Swinburne. The former was one of his lifelong friends - Milnes recorded some of their conversations in his day books - while the latter was allowed to browse Milnes' vast library of continental erotica and received assistance from his friend in publishing some of his earliest poems.

In 1863 Milnes was named Lord Houghton and appointed to the House of Lords; during the remaining decades of his life he spent most of his time serving as a statesman - entertaining foreign dignitaries and speaking at public events, such as the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and the unveiling of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's bust at Westminster Abbey.

Price: $175.00