[FRASER, William Augustus, Sir.]
Poems by the Knight of Morar.
London, Whittingham and Wilkins, 1867.
Large 4to, pp. [224], with an etched frontispiece by George Cruikshank illustrating ‘The Maniac Monk’, dated 1866; printed on very thin paper in various shades of pale yellow; a fine copy in the original red cloth, front cover lettered gilt, bright blue gazed endpapers, front cover with a few small stains.
First edition, privately printed, a presentation copy inscribed on the title-page ‘From the Author . Paris. 1867.’
Fraser’s eccentric collection, which included poems on Byron and Wellington, gothick-tinged medievalism, and comic poetastery, was printed in two distinct formats: the first as here on thin, pale yellow paper with a frontispiece by Cruickshank, and the second on very thick paper with three additional plates by Doré.
Conservative politician, author, and member of the Society of Dilettanti, Fraser (1826–1898) was an avid collector, bequeathing Byron’s sofa to the Garrick Club, Dickens’s chair to the Travellers’, and the manuscript of Gray’s Elegy to Eton; much of his library was sold at Sotheby’s in April 1901.
Cohn 325 (format 1).
