1967: Poems of Byron, Keats, and Shelley, selected and edited by Elliott Coleman, International Collectors Library, Garden City, New York. Illustrations by Barnett I. Plotkin. 695 pages.
Unopened. Unread. Collectible. Includes the original inlay from ICL with presentation of the work and The Marie Antoinette binding.
The shorter works are given in their entirety, the long poems are skillfully excerpted. The volume includes Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Dona Juan, She Walks in Beauty, Maid of Athens, Ode on a Grecian Urn, The Eve of St. Agnes, Endymion, Prometheus Unbound, Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark and more.
The volume is part of “The World’s Great Poetry†series of the International Collectors Library. Each volume in the series is bound in soft tan Marie Antoinette replica binding.
The original, on which this replica was based, encased a copy of the Iliad, bound by Derome the Younger for Marie Antoinette, the Austrian princess who married Louis XVI and reigned as Queen of France.
The original volume was bound in red Morocco, and the front cover bears the historic coat of arms of Queen Marie Antoinette – the symbol of France united with that of Austria – with a delicate triple fillet framing the cover. The spine has raised bands, richly decorated with gilt fillets and fleurons. In the center of each panel is a bird in a motif of foliage, and there are fleur-de-lys dentelles across top and bottom of the spine.
The design of Derome’s binding was adapted by the America artist Rafael Palacios for this Collectors Library volume, retaining much of the decoration intact. This edition, in rich tan, has 24K gold decoration, top edges coated with real gold and a matching ribbon marker.
