From Hardy’s Greenwood to the first western publication on forest conservation, we get lost in the tangled undergrowth of our shelves, choosing first and fine editions of some of our favourite examples of forests and woodlands in literature.
RACKHAM, Arthur (illus.); SHAKESPEARE, William.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 1908.
First Rackham edition, trade issue, handsomely bound by Hatchards in full green morocco. In his memorable illustrations for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Rackham “developed his gift for drawing witches, gnomes, fairies, and anthropomorphized trees and brought them to a pitch of vivid characterization, sometimes with an unsettling frisson of horror”. A Midsummer Night’s Dream takes place in the forest outside the city of Athens, where the social conventions and norms of city life do not pertain, and the anarchic chaos of the plot can play out.
First British illustrated edition, of Hawthorne’s masterpiece, attractively bound by Riviere. The forest is an important setting in The Scarlet Letter, representing the natural world, ungoverned by the Puritan laws of the town, and where witches gather and the devil takes souls.
Charles Job a stockbroker by profession, was a passionate amateur and became a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society in 1895, contributing to the annual exhibitions of the Society and the Linked Ring. (The Linked Ring was a brotherhood consisting of a group of photographers based in London which pledged to enhance photography as a fine art). During the First World War he was based at the Censor’s Office in Liverpool.
HARDY, Thomas.
Under the Greenwood Tree. 1891.
New edition, inscribed by the author “yours truly Thomas Hardy June 10. 1892” on his Max Gate card which is mounted to the frontispiece recto. First published in 1872, Under the Greenwood Tree was Hardy’s second novel, and the first of the Wessex novels. The story is inspired by a conflict between his grandfather’s “string choir” of viols and voices in Stinsford church and a new vicar who was determined to replace the choir with an organ. Although distinguished among all his fiction for its relative happiness and amiability, it is an important precursor to his major works.
DANTE ALIGHIERI; BOYD, Henry (trans.)
A Translation of the Inferno, in English Verse. 1785.
First edition, rare, of the first appearance of Boyd’s translation of Dante, considered superior to the blank verse translation of 1782 by Charles Rogers, and preceding by 17 years Boyd’s own completion of the Divine Comedy (1802), which would be the first published completion in English. This Dublin edition is the true first, preceding the London edition of the same year.
Dante’s ‘Dark Wood’ is one of the great symbolic forests of literature, where the famous opening of the Inferno is set. The forest in Dante symbolises moral ambiguity and, the speaker having lost his way; it is also the portal through which he passes to begin his journey through the underworld, which will ultimately transform him.
First edition, first impression, deluxe issue, presentation copy inscribed by the author, “Gertrude Adams, with best wishes, from, A.A. Milne, Christmas, 1926” on preliminary blank. The recipient was the Milnes’ housekeeper at Mallord Street, Chelsea, and also a personal maid to Daphne Milne.
Winnie-the-Pooh was an immediate success and garnered even more enthusiastic reviews than its predecessor, with one critic writing that “When the real Christopher Robin is a little old man, children will find him waiting for them. It is the child’s book of the season that seems certain to stay” (Thwaite, p. 317).
First edition of this pivotal work of American nature writing, a back-to-nature classic which made Thoreau one of the prophets of the early American environmental movement; one of 2,000 copies printed. This is a lovely copy in the original cloth.
First edition, presentation copy, inscribed by Evelyn to Sir Robert Moray, one of the founding fellows and first acting president of the Royal Society. Sylva is “the first western publication on forest conservation”.
