FROM BRIGHT TO STIRLING MAXWELL
[BURNS, Robert.] BRIGHT, Henry A[rthur].
Some Account of the Glenriddell MSS. of Burns’s Poems: with several Poems never before published … [Printed for private Distribution.]
Liverpool, Gilbert G. Walmsley …, 1874.
4to, pp. 55, [1]; some scattered foxing at foot of first and last two leaves, else a very good copy, inscribed ‘With the Editor’s compliments’ and with a letter by him presenting the work to William Stirling Maxwell in March 1875; contemporary quarter green morocco and pebbled red cloth, blocked with two versions of Maxwell’s monogram (stamps 41 and 53 in BAB), and with his large bookplate.
Added to your basket:
Some Account of the Glenriddell MSS. of Burns’s Poems: with several Poems never before published … [Printed for private Distribution.]
First edition, scarce, a presentation copy: a privately-printed catalogue of the famous Glenriddell manuscripts; Burns’s preface and several poems are printed here for the first time.
The manuscripts – two volumes of poems and letters presented by Burns to his friend Robert Riddell – had been in the possession of Burns’s biography James Currie and were supposed to have been returned to the family, but were instead retained and later donated to the Liverpool Athenaeum; they lay there for twenty years until they were discovered in a box by the Liverpool bibliophile Henry Bright. In 1875 Bright became a member of the Roxburghe Club alongside Maxwell – his letter recalls a much earlier meeting at Crewe and hopes that the work might find a place ‘in your fabulous library at Keir’.
Egerer 764.
