The Books of William Morris Described with Some Account of His Doings in Literature and in the Allied Crafts

Holland Press, London, 1976 reprint of 1897 first edition. Reprint limited to 500 copies. Cloth, 8vo,. xv, 224 pp, ills. Approximately 750 entries. Forman's work first appeared in 1897, the year after Morris' death, with the author stating his aim as being to set forth "in a connected narrative the public appearances of Morris in literature, from the time when, as an undergraduate, he founded and maintained The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, to the quite recent date on which his trustees issued the last but one of the posthumous writings destined to come from his Kelmscott Press. It is of a great record as well as a long one. It is one in connection with which the student and collector of this latter end of the nineteenth century is entitled to look for exact bibliographical knowledge; and I have tried to weave that knowledge into the thread of the narrative in such a manner as to present, with the aid of typographical arrangements and some pictorial illustration, a true portraiture of each book, and always with the hope that somewhere in the vicinity of such portraiture there will be something written or depicted to conjure up in the reader's eye at least the shadowy image of the man who lives in each and all of Morris's many books." In fact several of the items described here were forgeries created by Forman, who collaborated with Thomas J . Wise in the production of the "nineteenth century pamphlets" famously exposed by Carter and Pollard. Near Very Good in a used and slightly torn dustwrapper, which has some tape repairs on the reverse.