ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD With an Introduction by Sir Hugh Walpole

One of only 1500 hand-numbered copies SIGNED BY ARTIST Agnes Miller Parker, who has illustrated this volume, which was designed and printed by Robert Ashwin Maynard. With 32 lovely fullpage woodcut engravings by Agnes Miller Parker, the sketches for which were made by her at the same Stoke Poges churchyard where Thomas Gray originally brooded over his Elegy, additional woodcut vignette on the titlepage. Small 4to, in the original binding of black cloth, the upper cover with a deeply embossed churchyard vignette highlighted in silver below a sky of silver stars, this within a wide double-ruled silver frame, the spine silver lettered, in the original glassine wrapper and black cloth-covered slipcase. xv, 72, [1]. An extraordinary copy in the finest possible condition, the paper as fresh as new-fallen snow, the woodcuts bold, the binding as new with no fading, even the scarcely preserved celluloid jacket is fresh and clear and still flexible as is almost never the case, the slipcase too is in fine condition.

Edizione: a truly exceptional copy of this beautiful production for the limited editions club. thomas grays masterpiece (one of the best-loved eighteenth-century english poems, and certainly among the most influential single works of poetry) was a perfect choice to highlight the talents of agnes miller parker. her fine draughtsmanship and skillful use of black brought to life books ranging from 'the fables of aesop' to h. e. bates 'through the woods', but elegy written in a country church-yard is her most acclaimed work. this was her first book for the l.e.c., they would come back to her for illustrations for their editions of five books by thomas hardy, two plays by shakespeare as well as his 'poems', and edmund spenser's 'faerie queen'.