UNPUBLISHED VERSES BY ALGERNON CHARLES SWINEBURNE.
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles.
Eighteen lines of "unpublished verses" by Swinburne. A piracy, but under what circumstances? T.J. Wise, in his 1918 Swinburne bibliography (I, pp.133-134, footnote) makes passing reference to this brochure with the remark that it was printed by Richard Herne Shepherd in 1888 and was a piracy by him of a fragment of a first draft of Swinburne's Hesperia, and that it had "no value whatsoever." Partington (Thomas J. Wise in the Original Cloth, 1947, pp.202-4) asks how Wise knew that Shepherd printed it (there are arguments both for and against that), and why, if the item had "no value," Wise was earlier involved in selling it? Without explaining how it came into Wise's possession, he suggests that Wise, having at some point seen the relationship of these "unpublished" verses to Hesperia and the potential danger, was covering himself by casting blame elsewhere (Shepherd being long deceased), as he often enough did. Carter and Pollard (Enquiry, 1934, p.291) accept Wise's version. Barker and Collins (Sequel to an Enquiry, 1983, p.106, pp.239-40) also incline to the Shepherd-as-pirate version, with reservations, but add that Wise and Forman "almost certainly" had acquired Shepherd's stock "as a speculation." Todd (1959, no.304) lists this as a piracy, without saying whose it is. This copy does not entirely conform to the description of B. & C. (p.239), who state that the length of the author's name is 3 inches "in all copies seen"--the length in this copy is a little over 3.375 inches. Front cover irregularly browned and speckled along edge.
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