First Kelmscott edition, one of 350 copies on ‘Flower’ paper from an edition of 358 copies. In the mid-15th century one Robert Thornton of Yorkshire compiled a manuscript volume of literary, historical, and other works drawn from various sources. By the mid-17th century this manuscript was in the library of Lincoln Cathedral (where it remains), and in 1844 the antiquary and literary scholar James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps edited a selection of the manuscript’s texts which were issued by the Camden Society as The Thornton Romances: The Early English Metrical Romances of Perceval, Isumbras, Eglamour, and Degrevant. According to Sydney Carlyle Cockerell, The Thornton Romances had been ‘a favourite with Mr. Morris since his Oxford days’ (S.C. Cockerell (ed.), A Note by William Morris on his Aims in Founding the Kelmscott Press. Together with a Short Description of the Press ..., & an Annotated List of the Books Printed Thereat (Hammersmith, 1898), p. 40), and in 1860 Burne-Jones had painted ‘a mural in tempera for the drawing-room’ of The Red House, Morris’s home, which was based on the romance of Sir Degrevaunt (F. MacCarthy, William Morris: A Life for Our Times (London, 1994), p. 158). ¶¶

After he established the Kelmscott Press in 1891, Morris planned the publication of three volumes drawn from The Thornton Romances, all of which were to be edited by F.S. Ellis and illustrated with frontispieces by Burne-Jones. Syr Perecyvelle of Gales, the first of the three, was published in 1895, and the printing of the second, Sire Degrevaunt, was finished on 14 March 1896, some six months before Morris’s death on 3 October 1896. The text of the third, Syr Ysambrace, ‘was all set up and partly printed by June, 1896, at which time it was intended to include “Sir Eglamour” in the same volume’ (A Note by William Morris, p. 55). After Morris’s death, Cockerell (the secretary of the press and Morris’s de facto private secretary) oversaw the publication of those books planned by the press which he felt could be completed. These included Sire Degrevaunt and Syr Ysambrace (which was ‘finished on the 14th day of July, 1897’ according to the colophon), which were issued on the 12th and 11th of November 1897 respectively. The print run of Syr Ysambrace comprised 350 copies on paper priced at 12s. (as here) and eight copies on vellum priced at 4 guineas. ¶¶

This copy was acquired by the previous owner from Henry Sotheran Ltd, the longest-established active antiquarian bookseller in England, which counted William Morris among its clients (cf. W.S. Peterson, Bibliography of the Kelmscott Press, p. 20). ¶¶

W.S. Peterson, Bibliography of the Kelmscott Press (1985), A48. ¶¶¶

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