POEMS BY...

London & Boston: Elkin Mathews & Copeland & Day, 1895. Original polished brown buckram, spine stamped in gilt, title printed in black and red. Corners a bit bumped, crown of spine frayed, cloth a bit rubbed, otherwise a very good copy. First edition of the author's first collection of poems. Copy number 25 of twenty-five copies only, printed at the Chiswick Press, with a manuscript statement of limitation in Johnson's hand. When the trade edition was prepared, the first and last gatherings were revised and reset, the initial capitals were altered, and the whole reprinted. Hence, the first twenty-five copies constitute the only true first edition. This was the author's own copy, signed and dated ("London: 1895.") and with a six line invocation to six Saints, in Latin, in his hand, on the front endsheet. Additionally, Johnson has made a total of sixteen manuscript alterations or insertions on twelve pages in the text. A careful collation with the second (i.e. first trade edition) reveals that only one of these corrections, that in the epigram on page [vi], was incorporated when the text was reset and reprinted. Several are of a substantive nature, including the insertion of a new line on page 103. This is the major collection of one of the most important of the poets of the 1890s, and due to his early death in 1902, manuscript material of consequence by him is uncommon. This is a textually important association copy of the first order. HAYWARD 304 (the second edition alone exhibited).