THE WORKS OF ROBERT BURNS. With Life by Allan Cunningham and Notes by Gilbert Burns, Lord Byron, etc.

With an engraved frontispiece portrait and vignette title-page showing Burns’ birthplace, and with two large folding facsimiles of manuscript poems in Burns’ hand. Thick 8vo, exquisitely bound in beautiful Victorian full crimson morocco, both covers impressively decorated with double gilt filleted border rules surrounding a gilt floral-motif framework around a central gilt wreath made of interlocking thistles, and this surrounding a central harp-shaped emblem featuring a tree, cornucopia and walking stick. The board edges gilt tooled, the turn-ins tooled in blind. The spine with compartments fully gilt decorated in similar floral and thistle motif between gilt stippled and ruled raised bands, one compartment with bold gilt lettering, a.e.g. xxiv, 820 pp. A fine and beautiful copy, internally fresh and clean, very solid and firm which is unusual for such a large text-block, the Victorian binding with only minor expected evidence of age, very appealing and bright gilt work, inner front hinge expertly and near-invisibly refurbished, not distracting in the slightest from this beautiful binding.

Edizione: beautifully bound and presented. a fine collected edition of the works of scotland’s beloved national poet, the victorian binding is especially appealing. it includes allan cunningham’s “life”. cunningham, a published poet and magazine contributor, was a neighbor of robert burns. although burns died when cunningham was only a child, he had many recollections of his father’s friend. the list of contributors to the notes is a virtual ‘who’s who’ of contemporary greats in english and scottish literature.<br> the volume contains all of burns’ poems, epistles, ballads, political ballads satires and etc.