Poems

Lambeth: Printed (For Private Distribution Only) at the Author's Private Press, 1829, 1829. First edition. NCBEL III, 1134; Copac records two copies (BL and Cambridge); OCLC adds Aberdeen and Bibliotheque Nationale de France. Edges rubbed; very good copy.. Small 8vo, contemporary black morocco, skillfully rebacked, gilt decorations and lettering, a.e.g. Frontis portrait of the author after a portrait by R. Reading. Bound in before the portrait is a ten-page manuscript of Monceieff's poem "An Allegory," signed and dated September 20, 1845. A collection of about 100 poems in several forms by the playwright, theatre manager, miscellaneous writer and apparently occasional printer, as well. William Thomas Moncrieff (1794-1857) was a self-described "hack," and a prolific one, who specialized in adapting novels for the stage and who made what little money he could in theatre and literary work of any kind. A few years after this volume was published, Moncrieff began struggling with progressive blindness. Poems contains sonnets, songs, ballads, epigrams and madrigals, mostly on the subject of unrequited love, something at which Moncrieff appears to have had a great deal of experience. At the foot of the final page of text is the imprint "W. T. Moncrieff, Typ. Saville House, Lamberth." Inscribed at the head of the title-page "To J. Miles Esqr / With the Author's best acknowledgements." The manuscript poems go into length about the aging process and loss of sight and is certainly in part autobiographical.