Saturday, August 3, 2019

Chicago bookman offers Thomson's Shelley from Meville's library

The October 1920 Catalogue of Miscellaneous Books (Catalogue 86) from Chicago bookseller Walter M. Hill lists Shelley: A Poem by James Thomson, "From Herman Melville's library."

435 SHELLEY: A Poem, with other Writings relating to Shelley, by the late James Thomson ('B. V.'), with Essay on the Poems of William Blake by the same Author. Tall 8vo, boards (breaking), uncut. (London), 1884. $7.50.

Only 190 copies printed on toned paper for private circulation by Whittingham & Co. at the Chiswick Press. From Herman Melville's library.
 <https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015089588266?urlappend=%3Bseq=970>
Hill's Catalogue 86 presents books from the library of Joseph Very Quarles ("Judge Quarles") of Milwaukee, Wisconsin and two unspecified "private libraries."

At Melville's Marginalia Online, Thomson's Shelley is Number 520 in The Online Catalog of Books and Documents Owned, Borrowed and Consulted by Herman Melville. As stated there in the note, this volume most likely was a gift from James Billson. Melville found Thomson's essay on "The Poems of William Blake" particularly interesting and enlightening, as he wrote Billson on "The last day of 1888."

The Nation and the Athenaeum - August 13, 1921
  • Shelley, a  Poem via Google Books
    https://books.google.com/books?id=g6Xv96FjotcC&pg 
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