Description: Mary Shelley (Frankenstein) Keepsake MDCCCXXXI (1831) "A Dirge" 1st UK VG First UK edition, first printing with MDCCCXXXI (1831) on the title page. Publisher London Hurst, Chance, and Co. & Jennings and Chaplin, 1831. 5.25" x 8" Octavio [x] 1-319 [i Blank]. Original marbled boards, burgundy leather spine and gilt lettering to spine. Marbled pastedowns & endpapers. No dust jacket. Includes A Dirge by the author of Frankenstein. Book Condition: Very Good Spine ends bumped. Chipping to covers. Pastedowns & endpapers are very lightly browned. Previous owner's signature on front pastedown. Advertisement for book pasted to FEP. Binding is tight. Text has light foxing. "A Dirge" is a poetic dirge composed by Percy Bysshe Shelley. It was published posthumously in 1824 by his wife, Mary Shelley, in the collection Posthumous Poems and reprinted here. The text has been set to music by Frank Bridge, Charles Ives, Ottorino Resphigi, Roy Ewing Agnew, and Benjamin Britten. The dominant themes of the poem are isolation, loneliness, and death. It is a scene of desolation and despair. The wind moans in a grief that cannot be expressed in words; the rainstorm billows in vain; the trees are barren and their branches strain under the unceasing onslaught. A gloom pervades the world. A dirge is a song meant to invoke and express the emotions of grief and mourning that are typical of a funeral. Images of nature are used to symbolize the grief he feels, such as the moaning and wild wind, the sullen clouds, the sad storm, the bare woods, the deep caves, and the dreary main. He imbues his natural surroundings with anthropomorphic characteristics and qualities to express his grief. The nouns are modified by adjectives that give them human attributes and traits to express his own emotions of dreariness and sadness. He concludes that the whole world is “wrong” and is grieving. Shelley wrote the poem after the deaths of his friend John Keats and his son William who were buried in a cemetery in Rome. The untimely death of Keats reopened the floodgates of emotion for Shelley, inevitably leading him to reexperience the sadness and pain he felt for the death of his infant son.
Price: 500 USD
Location: Arlington, Texas
End Time: 2024-09-10T21:47:01.000Z
Shipping Cost: 4.75 USD
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Item Specifics
Restocking Fee: No
Return shipping will be paid by: Buyer
All returns accepted: Returns Accepted
Item must be returned within: 30 Days
Refund will be given as: Money Back
Binding: Hardcover
Language: English
Special Attributes: 1st Edition
Author: Mary Shelley
Publisher: Hurst, Chance, and Co.
Topic: Horror
Subject: Literature & Fiction
Original/Facsimile: Original
