2 Algernon Charles Swinburne first editions are documented on this shelf, from Atalanta in Calydon (1865) to Poems and Ballads (1866) across 2 different publishers. Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Algernon Charles Swinburne title from later printings and book-club copies — the publisher and year to expect, the number-line or edition-statement conventions, and the tells that show up in online listings.
Identification only, per the house rule: no prices and no appraisals here. Checking a Algernon Charles Swinburne copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.
- Atalanta in Calydon — 1865 · Edward Moxon & Co.Small quarto verse-drama, Swinburne's first major success, with a binding designed by Dante Gabriel Rossetti: publisher's cream cloth with the title in gilt on the spine and a gilt device stamped on the upper board. A recognized point of issue is the presence of cancel leaves at pages 85-86 in the first edition. Thomas J. Wise's later claim that only 100 copies were printed is now regarded as one of his…. Do not rely on any print-run figure attributed to T. J. Wise for this title; check instead for the cream Rossetti-designed cloth and the pp. 85-86 cancel leaves, since a genuine 1865 Moxon first edition is identified by this physical point, not by a stated edition size.
- Poems and Ballads — 1866 · Edward Moxon & Co., withdrawn; reissued the same year by John Camden HottenMoxon printed and issued the book in April 1866 but withdrew it from sale the day after the first hostile reviews appeared, fearing prosecution for obscenity; John Camden Hotten reissued the same sheets later that year under his own imprint, which is the state most often found. A genuine Moxon-imprint copy is identified by the title page reading "Edward Moxon & Co." rather than "John Camden Hotten"; because…. The Moxon imprint of April 1866 has technical priority as the first published state, but genuine Moxon-imprint copies are very uncommon; the Hotten reissue of the same year, using the same sheets under a cancel title leaf, is the state most often described in the trade as "first edition.". Poems and Ballads, Second Series (1878) and Poems and Ballads, Third Series (1889) are entirely separate, later Swinburne volumes and should never be confused with the 1866 book when identifying a first edition of "Poems and Ballads.".
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