Strawberry Hill Press

A famous [re]issue of the first work ever printed by the Strawberry Hill press, which has been the source of considerable bibliographical bafflement and bemusement over the years. This issue was for many years believed to be the first produced by Walpole due to the superior quality of the paper, the misspelling 'Illissus' (p.8, Ode II, 3, line 3), and the missing comma after 'Swarm' (Ode II, 2, line 7). However, the bibliographer Hazen has, it is now fairly widely recognised, established through extensive research that this edition is in fact an unauthorised printing undertaken by Kirgate forty years later. One of the other aspects that had many believing this was the true first issue is the fact that it is actually scarcer than the first, currently believed to be one of only circa 1,000 copies, whereas the 1757 issue was more likely produced in a run of about 2,000. ESTC records just 4 copies of pirated issue in institutional collections.

With provenance for Arthur Kay (1861-1939). Famed as an art collector, Kay's notes and clipped catalogue entries here suggests he was also a serious book collector. The etched bookplate was created by his wife Katharine Kay née Cameron, a watercolourist & etcher from the Glasgow School of Art, where she had been one of the self-styled 'Immortals', a group that included the sisters Margaret and Frances Macdonald, the former marrying the architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh, a fellow student of Cameron in the early 1890s. The binding by the Maclehose of Glasgow was presumably commissioned by Kay.

First edition, pirated issue, 4to (26 x 20 cm); half-title, engraved vignette view of Strawberry Hill House to title-page, some light spotting, bookplates to front pastedown and verso of front free endpaper, clipped catalogue descriptions and previous owner's note tipped in to recto of front free endpaper; 19th century calf with simple gilt rule borders to covers, contrasting red morocco title-piece to spine, by Maclehose of Glasgow; 21, [1]pp.

ESTC N61348; Hazen 1; cf. Rothschild 1067.