(SYMONS, Arthur). SHAKESPEARE, William.
Twelfth Night. [with] Measure for Measure.
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.