[The Crown Edition of] The Poets of Great Britain

New York and London: Chiwick Press:- Charles Whittingham and Co,, [1900]. My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
A Fine Extra-Illustrated Set of The Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley
Finely Bound Almost Certainly by The Harcourt Bindery of Boston

SHELLEY, Percy Bysshe. [The Crown Edition of] The Poets of Great Britain. Extra Illustrated Copy of the Aldine Edition of the British Poets. New York and London: Chiwick Press:- Charles Whittingham and Co,, [1900]. Five small octavo volumes.

Five small octavo volumes (6 1/2 x 4 inches; 165 x 102 mm.). [iii]-lxvi, [1]-203, [1, blank]; [vi], [1]-294, [1, printers device], [1, blank]; [iii]-xii, [1]-380; [iii]-x; [1]-345, [1, printers device]; [iii]-xiv, [1]-366, [1, printers device], [1, blank] pp. Title-pages printed in black and red. With a memoir at the beginning of volume one. The last volume contains an index of first lines and a general index.

Extra-illustrated by the insertion of twenty-six engraved plates, including eight hand-colored.

Handsomely bound almost certainly by The Harcourt Bindery ca. 1900, in full red morocco, covers with double gilt border with fancy corner-pieces, enclosing a spray of flowers elaborately stamped in gilt and with green morocco leaf inlays and buff morocco inlaid flowers. Spines with four raised bands decoratively tooled and lettered in gilt in compartments and with three olive green morocco flower inlays. Highly decorative gilt turn-ins surrounding an oval panel of green morocco decorated in gilt with a large central gilt flower with inlaid red morocco flower head, green moire silk end-leaves, all edges gilt. Minimal rubbing to joints, otherwise fine. Although unsigned the binding is almost certainly by The Harcourt Bindery.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (4 August 1792 - 8 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achievements in poetry grew steadily following his death and he became an important influence on subsequent generations of poets including Robert Browning, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Thomas Hardy, and W. B. Yeats.
Published in The Examiner on 11 January 1818, Ozymandias is perhaps Percy Bysshe Shelley's most celebrated and best-known poem, concluding with the haunting and resounding lines: '"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

We believe this to be 1/10 copies specially bound and extra-illustrated.

The Harcourt Bindery of Boston has made fine cloth and leather art bindings by hand since 1900. It remains the largest for-profit hand bookbindery in the U.S. When it was founded in 1900, Boston was home to over 47 book binderies and 1,452 craftsmen, according to the company's website. Few large binderies exist today. Before the 1930s, there were about fifteen people working in the Harcourt Bindery; the number fell to five during the Depression, and the company changed hands three times between 1927 and 1931. When binder Sam Ellenport took over Harcourt in 1971, there were only four employees. In 2008, Ellenport sold the Harcourt Bindery to Acme Bookbinding of Boston.