Reed A Bibliography of William Wordsworth, 1787-1930 A5 (“some copies were printed on distinctively heavy laid paper…with watermark of an eagle…These are likely to have been special commissions”), Healey The Cornell Wordsworth collection no.14.
Most copies are bound in one volume and printed on cheaper paper (as of April 2025 there are three copies of this standard edition for sale online priced £950 (defective), £1,397 (restored and rebacked) and £7,279 (rebacked)) . A variant title-page exists with “For Joseph Groff” in the imprint.
A special copy of an important edition of Wordsworth and Coleridge’s famous collection of poetry: the first American edition of Lyrical Ballads and the first publication of Romantic poetry in America including the important Preface which outlined the aims of the Romantic movement. Published by James Humphreys who sought to use, “the Ballads and other works published by his press to critique and alter the course of the new [American] nation.” Most copies were printed on cheaper paper and bound in one volume but this is one of a handful of examples printed on thick paper and bound in a very high quality two volume American tree calf binding.
A note on the title-page explains that this edition was republished from the second London edition which was the first to include the important preface, essentially a manifesto setting out the aims of the Romantic movement. The publisher, James Humphreys, explains in his own preface here that the publication of this American edition was delayed in order to include the revisions made to the second London edition.
The Preface to Lyrical Ballads and the poems themselves seek to democratise literature and describe the everyday life of working people in a clearer and more relatable language. As such, Joel Pace notes in his essay “Rhyming Revolutionaries”: Lyrical Ballads in America, that Humphreys’ “used the Ballads and other works published by his press to critique and alter the course of the new nation. Humphreys was as concerned with people being disenfranchised during Jefferson’s tenure as president as Wordsworth and Coleridge were with people being disenfranchised during George III’s reign as King” (p.230). Pace goes on to state:
“James Humphreys published the 1802 American edition of Lyrical Ballads…as a means of entering into political debate and articulating a middle ground between two divergent visions of America: Alexander Hamilton’s strong federal government, on the other hand, and President Jefferson’s agrarian republic that proclaimed to represent power to the people, on the other. As Humphreys’ publications during this time show, he did not believe the Jefferson administration provided adequate protection of the rights of African Americans, Native Americans, women and other disenfranchised groups.” (p.233).
The most immediately striking aspect of this book is the thickness of the paper and the quality of the binding; without the imprint, one would imagine this was a rather handsome piece of English book production from the same period. In addition Humphreys “subtly declared his allegiance” to the Hamiltonian side by including a US Federalist eagle in the watermark of the paper.
One thinks of the Lyrical Ballads as a quintessentially English collection of poetry, but poems such as, “The Complaint of a forsaken Indian Woman” (Vol I, p.45) and “Ruth” (Vol II, p.81) would no doubt have appealed to American readers:
“There came a Youth from Georgia’s shore,
A military casque he wore
With splendid feathers drest;
He brought them from the Cherokees;
The feathers nodded in the breeze
And made a gallant crest.
From Indian blood you deem him sprung;
Ah no! he spake the English tongue
And bear a Soldier’s name;
And when America was free
From battle and from jeopardy
He cross the ocean came“
The copy of this edition in the Dr. Gerald N. Wachs collection (now at the University of Chicago) is similarly bound and also printed on thick paper with the catalogue stating that, “the great majority of copies were printed on thinner paper, and bound two volumes in one” (see item no. 12, Poetic Associations The Nineteenth-century English Poetry Collection of Dr. Gerald N. Wachs, 2017).
An essentially unobtainable edition of the first volume of Lyrical Ballads was published in Bristol in 1798 (thirteen copies are known to exist). The first London edition was published in the same year along with a second volume. The second London edition (1800) was the first to include the important Preface (included here).
Provenance: J. ?Boggs, pencil signature on the front pastedown.
