MORRIS, William. Poems by the Way. London: Reeves and Turner, 1891. Large-paper issue, one of only 100 numbered copies, this copy No. 95, printed on Van Gelder handmade paper and preserved in the original publisher’s buckram.
A particularly scarce issue of William Morris’s Poems by the Way, published in 1891, the same year as the Kelmscott Press edition. While the regular Reeves and Turner edition was issued in a smaller format, only 100 copies were produced on large paper, each individually numbered in manuscript.
The volume is printed on substantial Van Gelder handmade paper, with the maker’s watermark present, the sheets left untrimmed and retaining their broad margins and irregular deckled edges.
Poems by the Way was Morris’s first substantial collection of new poetry for many years. Its contents range characteristically across medieval and Scandinavian legend, love and landscape, alongside the political poetry of Morris’s later life. The volume includes The Day Is Coming, The Voice of Toil, The God of the Poor, All for the Cause, The Haystack in the Floods and Goldilocks and Goldilocks.
The typography is particularly effective in this large-paper format. Generous margins surround the text, large initial letters introduce individual poems, and poem titles appear in the outer margins, producing a restrained and spacious page that reflects Morris’s continuing concern with the physical design of the book.
Condition
Quarto. 196pp. Original cream buckram, lettered in gilt to upper board and spine. Printed on handmade paper, edges untrimmed. Original buckram toned and lightly marked overall, with greater browning to the spine and some fading to the gilt lettering. Minor rubbing and wear to extremities. Endpapers browned, with an early pencil note identifying the large-paper issue. Internally generally clean and bright, with occasional light spotting and the expected irregularity to the deckled fore-edges. An attractive unrestored copy in its original publisher's binding which remains sound.
References
H. Buxton Forman, The Books of William Morris Described; Thomas Scott, A Bibliography of the Works of William Morris.
