Goblin Market & Other Poems. London and Cambridge: Macmillan and Co., 1862.
First edition.
8vo. vii, [i], 192 pp., with wood-engraved frontispiece and illustrated title by Daniel Gabriel Rossetti, and cut by William Morris. Blue publisher’s cloth designed by Rosetti, front cover and spine ruled and decorated in gilt, back cover ruled and decorated in blind. Some faint chipping to head and foot of spine; first and last few leaves foxed (as usual, due to paper stock), but overall a very good copy.
First edition of this volume of poems, which contains one of the most recognizable examples of Victorian poetry. The author’s second book, it is perhaps one of the most important nineteenth-century volumes of poetry to be written by a woman. With its subtly erotic undertones, its thinly veiled allusions to drug addiction and its at times confusing themes of sisterly love and sacrifice, Goblin Market is one of the most seductive and haunting poems of the Victorian, if not any period.
Rossetti (1830-94) was an English poet, daughter of the Italian poet Gabriele Rossetti and sister of the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti. She had a mental breakdown at the age of fourteen, which some biographers believe was the result of sexual abuse, possibly at the hands of her father; she was plagued by bouts of depression for the rest of her life, and turned to religion to provide some comfort from this. She became so devout in her beliefs that she turned down two marriage proposals due to religious differences.
Ashley, IV, p.100; Colbeck, II, p. 689; Tinker, 1785; Wilson, p. 423
ID:
3244
$
1,200