SHELLEY, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822). Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley. London: Edward Moxon, 1852.
12mo. Half-title, 1p. advertisements at end. 19th century polished calf gilt. Provenance: John Duke Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge (1820-1894), great-nephew of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (signature on blank leaf, two annotations, initials at end, ALS from Edward Moxon tipped in); Frank T. Sabin (d.1915), London rare book and autograph dealer (ALS from Thomas Hookham with postscript in Sabin's hand); T. Tileston Wells (armorial bookplate); Louis V. Ledoux (1880-1948), American poet, George Edward Woodberry scholar, Japanese print collector (engraved bookplate).
FIRST EDITION of this "ingenious forgery perpetuated by an impostor, claiming to be the son of Lord Byron. Two genuine letters, which happened to be in Moxon's hands, were included. The fraud was discovered, to the chagrin of Browning and Moxon, who at once destroyed all obtainable copies of the book" (Granniss/Grolier Shelley 127). [Bound in:] "Unpublished Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley," from Fraser's Magazine, March 1860. -- "The Coliseum. A Fragment." N.p., n.d. (with a footnote reading: "This is the fragment referred to by Capt. Medwin in the Memoir--see Athenaeum, p.503). Ashley V, p.92; Wise , p.74.
WITH MANUSCRIPT MATERIAL FROM JOHN DUKE COLERIDGE, EDWARD MOXON & THOMAS HOOKHAM REGARDING THE FORGERIES
Two of the published letters include manuscript postscripts regarding the authenticity of those letters. On p.66, following Letter V, he writes: "This letter was printed in the Memoirs of Shelley...in the volume of Coleridge, Shelley & Keats...as early as 1833." In a note on p.145, following Letter XXI, he notes the specific passages in the letter which led to the doubt of the volume as a whole.
[Tipped in:] MOXON, Edward. Autograph letter signed to Coleridge, n.d. 2 pages, 8vo. Moxon discusses the manuscripts which served as the basis for this work: "The important fact respecting Letter 5 I will immediately communicate to Mr. Cunningham, the writer of the article in the Athenaeum. I may mention it is the decided opinion of Mr. Hookham, who knows more of Shelley's private history than any one else, that the whole of the letters are genuine. ...My own impression is that the letters which I purchased at Sotheby's are not in Shelley's hand writing, but with perhaps two or three exceptions copies of genuine letters."
[Laid in:] HOOKHAM, Thomas. Autograph letter signed to Frank T. Sabin, 9 October 1882. With a post-script in Sabin's hand. 5pp., 8vo. "You ask me respecting the authenticity of a Letter from Shelley to my Father, which is included in the volume of 'Letters of P. B. Shelley, edited by Robert Browning,' and published about 1850. This volumes has long been condemned as spurious, and all the letters indiscriminately pronounced forgeries. All I can say is that the single one addressed to my Father is not so...The letter itself is an unimportant one, and he did not deem it worthwhile to make public his guarantee of the fact. It might naturally lead to the inference that there may be others in the volume equally genuine, but on this point I will not pressure to pass an opinion."
Property from Historic Sengen House, Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York
