Author: RALEIGH (Walter), Sir:
Title: The Poems of Sir Walter Raleigh: Now First Collected. With a Biographical and Critical Introduction: By Sir Egerton Brydges. The Second Edition.
Description: London: From the Private Press of Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown. Printed by T. Davison, Whitefriars. 1814 Small 8vo, 163 x 100 mms., pp. [viii], 17 [18 blank], 79 [80 adverts[, attractively bound in full hard grain brown morocco, elaborate gilt panels on covers, spine ornately gilt in compartments, olive morocco label, all edges gilt. A fine copy with the pencil autograph and date on the verso of the front free end-paper, "W Digby/ 1862." Sir Walter Ralegh [Raleigh] (1554–1618) published his first poem in 1576, as a commendatory verse in George Gascoigne's The Steele Glass. He was living in Islington at that time. The anecdote about his coverig a puddle with his cloak so that Queen Elizabeth could walk over it verges on the apocryphal, but it doesn't displace her real affection for him and the poems he wrote for her. The Oxford DNB provides this account of his poetry: "Ralegh's poems are essentially the work of a courtier, written very much within the context of the royal court. Some are commendations of the works of others, like his early verses praising Gascoigne's The Steele Glass, some are epitaphs, like that on Sidney. Most are concerned with love, especially his love for Elizabeth. His poetry is part, an important part, of his campaign to make a name for himself at court and, above all, to win the favour of the queen. That is not to say that the poems were cold or unemotional. On the contrary, they were passionate, angry, hyperbolic, cynical, pessimistic, and often despairing." Other memes associate him with having introduced both potatoes and tobacco into England. This edition was first published in a quarto of 100 copies at Brydges' Lee Priory Press.

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