Fourteenth printing. This collection of poems by Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) was first published by Macmillan in 1890 and is based upon their ‘Library Edition’ of Poems by Matthew Arnold (issued in three volumes in 1885), with the addition of two further poems, ‘Horatian Echo’ (1887) and ‘Kaiser Dead’ (1877). Poetical Works was reprinted twice in the first year of publication, with further reprints appearing at regular intervals through the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first of the twentieth. ¶¶

This copy was purchased from the booksellers Bowes & Bowes, who were based at 1 Trinity Street Cambridge and one of the oldest continually operating bookshops in Great Britain, with a history of bookselling extending back to at least 1581 (the premises is currently occupied by Cambridge University Press). The shop had been taken over by the Macmillan brothers in 1844 as their publishing and bookselling business grew; in 1846 their nephew Robert Bowes joined the business as an apprentice, eventually taking over the running of the bookshop, which changed its name to Macmillan & Bowes, in 1882. Robert’s son George Bowes became a partner in the shop in 1899, and the business became Bowes & Bowes in 1907 (the retailer’s stamp in the volume, ‘Bowes & Bowes, Late Macmillan & Bowes’, reflects the recent change). It seems likely that this handsome binding was executed for Bowes & Bowes – certainly, Arnold’s Poetical Works would have been a very popular title to hold in stock as an attractively-bound volume for presentation. There is a pencilled code on the rear free endpaper which possibly records the cost of the binding, beside the numbers ‘6/10’, which may indicate that the binding was completed for Bowes & Bowes in or shortly before June 1910. ¶¶

This copy was a gift from James Stirling to Margaret Darwin – daughter of the distinguished mathematician and geophysicist Sir George Howard Darwin (1845-1912), and a granddaughter of Charles Darwin (1809-1882) – whose account of her childhood home and family was posthumously published as A House by the River. Newnham Grange to Darwin College. A History of the Site, Buildings and Former Inhabitants (Cambridge, 1976). Interestingly, Matthew Arnold had sent Charles Darwin a copy of his book Literature & Dogma: An Essay towards a Better Apprehension of the Bible (London, 1873), which Darwin acknowledged in a letter of 9 February 1873 with the words ‘I have been surprised & very much pleased by your kindness in having sent me your new work [...]. I hope soon to read it with profit & interest’. Arnold’s book was apparently criticised by the young George Darwin in an essay on religion and moral sense, which he sent to his father, prompting the comment that ‘[y]ou expose well the fallacy in what Arnold says about prayer’ (letter of 21 October 1873). Some five years after receiving this volume, Margaret Darwin would marry her childhood friend, the surgeon and scholar Geoffrey Keynes, on 12 May 1917, while she was working with a code-breaking unit at the Admiralty and he was serving on the Western Front with the Royal Army Medical Corps. This volume was inherited by their son, the noted bibliophile Stephen Keynes, the founder and chairman of the Charles Darwin Trust, and a member of the Roxburghe Club.

Cf. T.B. Smart, The Bibliography of Matthew Arnold, 20 (1st ed.). ¶¶¶

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