Marmion; a tale of Flodden Field

Edinburgh: Printed by J. Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Company, 1808. [8], 377, [1], cxxvi pp. With additional engraved title page (dated 1809) and a further six plates after designs by Richard Westall. Contemporary brown straight-grain morocco, richly tooled in gilt and blind, gauffered edges. Rubbed, spine dulled. Yellow silk endpapers, gilt dentelles, scattered spotting, pencilled ownership inscription of William St. Clair to verso of FFEP. An elaborately bound copy of the first edition of Sir Walter Scott's (1771-1832) most intellectually ambitious long poem; a meditation on war, patriotism and personal corruption, that concludes with Flodden, the battle on 9th September 1513 in which James IV, king of Scots, was killed and the Scottish army annihilated. Consisting of six cantos, each with an introductory epistle, Marmion was first published in Edinburgh by Archibald Constable in 1808; 2,000 copies were printed. Scott made refinements to the text for the second and third editions (3,000 copies each) published later in the year. Many further editions followed, both individual and collected, and in 1830 Scott provided the poem with a revised introduction. William St. Clair (1937-2021), British scholar and senior civil servant, notable as the author of The Godwins and the Shelleys, The Biography of a Family (1989) and The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (2004). . First edition. Quarto.