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An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard -
Thomas Gray
1869 - Sampson Low, London
‘Full many a Gem of purest Ray serene
The dark unfathom'd Caves of Ocean Bear:
Full many a Flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its Sweetness on the desert Air.’
A finely bound and illustrated edition of Thomas Gray’s ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’, one of the most widely-quoted poems of the 18th century. It is a meditation on the inevitability of death; the vanity of ambition and the universal human desire to be loved. In particular the poem looks at death as a leveller, an indiscriminate force which makes no distinction between the famous on the one hand and, on the other, the anonymous – those who, in the words of the poem:
Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife
Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray
‘Widely considered his masterpiece, it is believed that Gray wrote the 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' in the graveyard of the church in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire in 1751. The poem was a literary sensation when published by Robert Dodsley in February 1751 and has made a lasting contribution to English literature’
With sixteen colour chromolithograph illustrations from drawings by R. Barnes, R. P. Leitch, E. M. Wimperis and others, each with descriptive tissue guards, and two leaves of the original manuscript in facsimile.
More details
Price HK$ 9,000
1869 - Sampson Low, London
‘Full many a Gem of purest Ray sereneThe dark unfathom'd Caves of Ocean Bear:
Full many a Flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its Sweetness on the desert Air.’
A finely bound and illustrated edition of Thomas Gray’s ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’, one of the most widely-quoted poems of the 18th century. It is a meditation on the inevitability of death; the vanity of ambition and the universal human desire to be loved. In particular the poem looks at death as a leveller, an indiscriminate force which makes no distinction between the famous on the one hand and, on the other, the anonymous – those who, in the words of the poem:
Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife
Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray
‘Widely considered his masterpiece, it is believed that Gray wrote the 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' in the graveyard of the church in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire in 1751. The poem was a literary sensation when published by Robert Dodsley in February 1751 and has made a lasting contribution to English literature’
With sixteen colour chromolithograph illustrations from drawings by R. Barnes, R. P. Leitch, E. M. Wimperis and others, each with descriptive tissue guards, and two leaves of the original manuscript in facsimile.
More details
Price HK$ 9,000