[PALGRAVE, FRANCIS TURNER (ed.)]. The Golden Treasury of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language. Cambridge: Macmillan and Co., 1862.
Hardcover. [The Golden Treasury Series] - early reprint - eleventh thousand. Leather-bound. Small octavo (155 x 100 mm.), pp. (12), 332. Exquisitely bound and signed by Riviere in contemporary binding of crushed morocco, the covers with a gilt border of twinned double fillets with corner-pieces, enclosing a gilt blocked elaborate repeat designed. The spine divided into six panels, the five bands gilt ruled, lettered in the second panel, the others elaborately gilt tooled in repeat pattern, the edges of the boards and turn-ins ruled and tooled in gilt, page edges gilt and heavily gauffered, plain endpapers, half-title present, title-page vignette. Condition: FINE. The binding is near pristine, bright and clean with almost no wear. The contents are suited to the binding, notably crisp and bright. Scarce thus.
Notes: A beautifully bound book and a magnificent example of the high-end exhibition grade bindings that Riviere produced at this time. First published in 1861, The Golden Treasury was "an anthology so successful that, as J. W. Mackail wrote in the Dictionary of National Biography, 'it remains one of those rare instances in which a critical work has substantive imaginative value, and entitles its author to rank among creative artists'" (ODNB). It includes lyrics and songs from Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Byron, and Tennyson, who originally suggested the project to Palgrave.
