(SYMONS, Arthur). SHAKESPEARE, William.

Twelfth Night. [with] Measure for Measure.

Notes and Introduction by Arthur Symons. With Numerous Illustrations by Gordon Browne. Pages [349]-[424], from Volume 4, and Pages 123-256 from Vol. 5 of The Henry Irving Shakespeare. The Works of William Shakespeare Edited by Henry Irving and Frank A. Marshall. With Notes and Introductions to Each Play by F. A. Marshall and Other Shakespearian Scholars. 4to., contemporary plain wrappers lettered in hand. London, Glasgow, and Dublin: Blackie & Son, Limited, n.d, 1888.

£400.00

These pages for Twelfth Night and Measure for Measure were extracted for the author and bound in plain drab wrappers, titled in hand by Symons himself, for presentation. Inscribed on the half title to his childhood mentor “To Churchill Osborne / with Arthur Symons’ kind regards. Sept:10:1888“ and “To Churchill Osborne Arthur Symons.”

Charles Churchill Osborne was “Third Master” at the High Street Classical and Mathematical School in Bideford, when Symons, age 14, was enrolled at that school. Osborne “discovered in him a passion for poetry and encouraged him to write“ (Beckson, p. 11). Osborne left the school shortly after, but the two maintained an epistolary friendship for some time. He “directed Arthur’s reading and interest in music“, and in the absence of a local public library, he was Symons’s source of the actual books and periodicals, as well as introducing him to writers including Philip Bourke Marston and “Leith Derwent”.

Slight damage to the extremities of the wrappers, but a very good copy indeed. Beckson, B9a.

Stock No.
238221