First edition. 8vo., complete with the half -title and 34 pages of final advertisements, a good, ex-library copy with cancelled stamp on front pastedown original blind-stamped dark green cloth, spine lettered in gilt and just chafed at the head, slight dampstaining to fore edges. London, Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1858.
A presentation copy, inscribed on the front free endpaper: “Mrs. Benson with the author’s very kind regards. Feby. 1858”. It is difficult not to assume that Mrs. Benson was a member of the literary Benson family. Richard Garnett writes in DNB: “In May 1857 Arnold was elected to the professorship of poetry at Oxford, which he held for ten years. He inaugurated his tenure of office by publishing in 1858 a tragedy, ‘Merope’, avowedly intended as a poetical manifesto, and therefore condemned in advance as a work of reflection rather than inspiration. It is stately but frigid”.
