(London: Thomas Evans, [1775]).

SCARCE AND A VERY ATTRACTIVE EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS, VERY POSSIBLY A LARGE PAPER COPY. According to Jaggard, "a large paper copy (the only one recorded), measuring 7-1/8 by 4-1/2 in., is in the writer's collection." Our copy measures 7 x 4-1/2 inches and might perhaps qualify as a large-paper copy.) The book is printed in the same style as Capell's 1767-6 issue of the Works, and probably intended to be supplementary to it. The arrangement follows that of the 1640 edition, but in this case the index now names every poem. Jaggard speculates that the editor might have been E. Capell.
Shakespeare’s first published works were poems, starting with Venus and Adonis in 1593. A tragic-comedy of Venus, her unrequited love for Adonis, and Adonis’s tragic death while hunting a boar. In the Rape of Lucrece, Shakespeare’s second published work, the rape of a Roman noblewoman leads to suicide and the downfall of the Tarquin kings of Rome.
“Poems on Several Occasions” finishes the volume. A collection of various subjects, dominated by Shakespeare’s favorite poetic theme, poems of love.


“Love’s not times fool, tho' rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending fickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.”
-The Picture of True Love
. Item #28942

A fine and very early printing of Shakespeare’s Poems. A Large Copy. With a charming vignette portrait of Shakespeare on the title-page from an engraving by Alexander Bannerman. Small 8vo, in handsome full chocolate crushed morocco, the spine with gilt chain flat bands creating compartments with central gilt tooled ornaments, one compartment gilt lettered, board edges gilt hatched, in a slipcase of complimentary brown cloth-covered boards with matching morocco tips. viii, 250pp. A fine copy, the text especially clean and fresh, the 20th century binding pristine and as new, the slipcase fine as well.