With occasional minor wear, but a very good set indeed of all ten of the series, with a bonus second printing of the last number. With Selwyn Image’s elegant design on the front covers, and the endearing device by Fairfax-Muckley on the lower, these are attractive, decent pamphlets, produced with the aim of giving a platform for young poets. The idea was Laurence Binyon’s, who was at the beginning of his career, and he was aided by the future poet laureate Robert Bridges, who also supplied the second volume in the series - James Nelson also believed that it was Bridges who successfully argued for the change in the series title from “The Splendid Shilling” to “The Shilling Garland”. The third volume in the series was Stephen Phillips’ Christ in Hades which had a considerable critical success, being reprinted at least five times, helped by what Nelson describes as a “logrolling” campaign. Notable other writers include Canon Richard Watson Dixon, who owes his place to Gerard Manley Hopkins, who had introduced him to Bridges, and Henry Newbolt, then a young lawyer, whose Admirals All became an extraordinary success. This latter included the first book appearance of his “Drake’s Drum”, a patriotic celebration of the memory of Francis Drake and the defeat of the Spanish Armada, of which Bridges said “it isn’t given to man to write anything better than that … I wish I had ever written anything half so good.”
This is the full list of the series:
BINYON, Laurence. The First Book of London Visions. 1896.
BRIDGES, Robert. Ode for the Bicentenary Commemoration of Henry Purcell. With Other Poems and A Preface on the Musical Setting of Poetry. 1896.
DIXON, Richard Watson. Songs and Odes. 1896
BINYON, Laurence. The Praise of Life. 1896. Inscribed by the author to one “Mrs. Ryllis” - the family name is strangely not that rare, but one also notes that Mrs. Edith Hacon (wife of the business partner of Ricketts and Shannon) was also known as ’Ryllis, as an abbreviation for Amaryllis.
PHILLIPS, Stephen. Christ in Hades and Other Poems. 1896
NEWBOLT, Henry. Admirals All and Other Verses. 1897
COLERIDGE, Mary E. as “ANODOS”. Fancy’s Guerdon. 1897
GHOSE, Manmohan. Love-Songs and Elegies. 1898
BINYON, Laurence. London Visions. Second Series. 1898 (with a copy of the second edition).
