"A COUPLET STYLE MORE REFINED AND MUSICAL THAN ANY BEFORE IN ENGLISH VERSIFICATION"

POPE, Alexander. The Works of Alexander Pope… With His Last Corrections, Additions, and Improvements, Together With the Commentary and Notes of His Editor [William Warburton]. London: A. Millar et al., 1766. Nine volumes. Octavo, contemporary full brown mottled calf, raised bands, elaborately gilt-decorated spines, marbled endpapers and edges. $2200.

A handsome set of the Warburton edition, with 24 full-page engraved plates by Hayman, Blakey, Wale, and others, in full contemporary mottled calf bindings.

“Like Dryden, much of Pope’s poetry, and all of his major poems, are inextricably linked to his mastery of the heroic couplet… In Pope’s hands [the couplet] could move seamlessly from pastoral to satire to epic or moral epistle and be consistently effective” (Ian Lancashire). Scholars go so far as to praise Pope’s early Pastorals for introducing “a couplet style more refined and musical than any before in English versification” (DLB). The Warburton edition was first published in 1751 with this same suite of plates. "In November 1741 Ralph Allen, with whom Pope was staying at Prior Park, near Bath, joined Pope in an invitation to Warburton to visit them. The acquaintance which followed ultimately made Warburton's fortune… Pope, dying in 1744, left to Warburton the properties of all the printed works upon which he had written or should write commentaries, only providing against alterations in the text" (DNB). The finely engraved plates were produced mainly from drawings by Francis Hayman, Samuel Wale and Nicholas Blakey. Lowndes, 1914. Allibone, 1627. Hand-drawn bookplates of "Miss Laclaverie" (probably the daughter of Antoine Laclaverie), dated 1799.

Interiors fine, a few small repairs to contemporary calf. A handsome set.