ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. By THOMAS GRAY. With thirty illustrations by Harry Fenn. Engraved by George T. Andrew. One vol. Post 8vo. Beautifully bound in cloth, bevelled boards, gilt and gilt edge. Price, $1.50 Illuminated covers, with fringed borders. Price, 1.75 Flexible morocco and tree calf covers, gilt edge. Price, 4.00 Royal 8vo. Beautifully bound in cloth, bevelled boards, gilt and gilt edge. Price, 3.00 Antique morocco and tree calf. Price, 8.00
Mr. Fenn visited Stoke Pogis, the locality of the poem, and many of the illustrations are from sketches taken by him on the spot, and all of them were made expressly for this edition.
An interesting feature of the Harry Fenn edition is the reproduction of three stanzas printed with the earlier editions, but subsequently dropped by the author.
"The 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,' by Thomas Gray, which has long held the proud distinction of being 'the most finished poem in the English tongue,' is just issued by Roberts Brothers, Boston, in an exquisitely illustrated volume, which must hold a very high place among the handsome gift books of the season. The illustrations were all drawn by Harry Fenn, especially for this edition, many of them from sketches made by the artist at Stoke Pogis, the scene of the poem. The frontispiece, an exquisite sketch of vines and flowers clustering over and about an old gravestone, presents a 'rejected verse,' reprinted from the earlier editions--a verse for the rejection of which one scarcely sees any sufficient reason, finding it as full of tenderly pathetic music as any part of the poem--and in an appendix the same verse reappears, with two others, together with some note of the places they were originally intended to fill and the author's reasons for their omission. The illustrations are all designed with as truly poetic a spirit as the poem itself breathes, and all are presented in the very highest style of the engraver's art. To say that a book is a 'picture book' is usually to imply something rather derogatory to its character for value in other respects. But not so in this case. Here the most delicate and appreciative art is used to interpret to the eye the exquisite poetry of the text. However warmly one may have supposed himself to admire the poem, he can hardly rise from thoughtfully looking over this edition of the 'Elegy' without some consciously new and fresh appreciation of the beauty of the lines, so strikingly and fitly has their lofty and tender thought been interpreted to the eye. In all, too, that pertains to the work of the book-maker--in paper, typography, binding, etc.--the little volume is in thorough keeping with the art of the poet and the illustrator."--_Chicago Times._