The Rape of the Lock: An Heroi-Comical Poem in Five Cantos

Arundel Street, London: Leonard Smithers, 1896. 1st Edition 1st Impression. Hardcover. Very Good. 4to - over 9¾ - 12" tall. Beardsley, Aubrey. 1st edition, 1st state. 48pp, embroidered with nine full page drawings by Aubrey Beardsley (frontispiece with tissue guard). Green cloth boards with elaborate and extensive gilt decorations, bevelled edges, top edge gilded, all other page edges deckled. (Boards a little rubbed, mildly scuffed at corners and spine folds). Bookplate on front paste down, a little toning to pages, especially the tissue guard over the frontispiece, a couple of chips to page edges. Overall a very good clean and strong copy of this new edition of Pope's Rape, with Beardsley illustrations. One of the extraordinary products of Beardsley's Annus Mirabilis of 1896. The Rape of the Lock was first published in 1712 by Bernard Lintott, at the sign of the Cross-Keys, between the two Temple Gates. Fleet Street. It was then in two cantos. It was occasioned by a frolic, carried rather beyond the bounds of good breeding, in which Lord Petre cut of a lock of Mrs Arabella Fermour's hair. The poem was undertaken at Mr Caryl's request in order to reconcile the two families. Such was its success, Pope was induced to extend it to five cantos by the addition of the machinery of sylphs and Gnomes. Those readers anxious to be acquainted with the original form will find its extent indicated in Pope's notes to the poem, which are printed in this volume at the end, with Pope's final revisions. First edition, 1st state : 'Leonard Smithers' at base of spine, without the '& Co' (see Samuels Lasner, p. 105).