Lot 106: CONGREVE, WILLIAM.

The Mourning Muse of Alexis. A Pastoral Lamenting the Death of our late Gracious Queen Mary... for Jacob Tonson, 1695

folio, first edition, title-page with heavy black border, title-page annotated by Narcissus Luttrell with price '4d', revision of date to '29 Jan: 1694' and the comment 'A good poem', twentieth-century black calf by Riviere, spine with two raised bands, binding scratched with loss to head of spine, hinges split but firm, some offsetting to free endpapers, slightly rubbed

Wing C5859; Grolier Wither to Prior 191; Hayward 136A; Pforzheimer 207

Narcissus Luttrell, annotation

congreve's first separately published poem. The catalogue of the Pforzheimer library notes "this is one of the best of the many elegiac pieces published on Mary's death". Johnson, however, regarded the elegy as a "despicable effusion".

Loosely inserted is a note by John Brett-Smith noting that Luttrell used to pile his purchases, by date of acquisition, unbound upon each other. The last page of the present volume (C2v) shows the offsetting of the title-page of another poem mourning Queen Mary.