The Golden Treasury — Palgrave | Oxford Edition 1919 | Uppingham School Prize Binding | Awarded to R. Gresley, 1921 | Full Morocco

A prize, a boy, and a headmaster who became a bishop.

In 1921 a boy named R. Gresley, sitting somewhere in the Lower Fourth at Uppingham School, did something well enough to be handed this. It is Palgrave's Golden Treasury — the anthology that taught English poetry to more people than any book before or since — bound in full brown morocco with the school's seal blocked in gilt on the front board.

That seal is worth a look. It shows an Elizabethan schoolmaster seated at his desk with boys ranged before him, encircled by the legend of the common seal of the governors of the schools and hospitals of Oakham and Uppingham in the county of Rutland. The figure is Archdeacon Robert Johnson, who founded both schools in 1584 and whose likeness has been stamped on their prize books ever since.

Inside, the label records the gift in Latin: Hunc librum R. Gresley honoris causa D.D. Reginaldus H. Owen A.M. A.D. MCMXXI. The name filled in by hand belongs to Reginald Herbert Owen, headmaster of Uppingham from 1916 to 1934 — an Oxford don before that, and afterwards Bishop of Wellington in New Zealand. Some schoolboy received his prize from a future bishop and, judging by the pencil form marks still in the front, promptly went back to the Lower Fourth.

The book itself. The Oxford Edition of 1919, with the hundred additional poems carrying Palgrave's selection to the end of the nineteenth century, and a photogravure portrait of Tennyson after the painting by G.F. Watts. Palgrave's dedication to Tennyson opens the book and is oddly moving — he records that it was Tennyson's encouragement, given while the two of them walked the wild scenery of Treryn Dinas in Cornwall, that made him begin the work at all, and that it was finished under Tennyson's advice.

On the Gresleys. This comes from a small library we bought at auction, several volumes of which carry the Gresley name across more than a century — from Regency sporting books signed by Charles Gresley of Lichfield, through a Victorian volume of English genealogy, to this schoolboy's prize of 1921. We cannot tell you exactly how R. Gresley stood in relation to the others, and we won't guess. What we can tell you is that the books kept the name, and that somebody in that family was still collecting them well into living memory.

The Gresleys themselves were Norman, recorded at Drakelowe in Derbyshire in Domesday and holding the same manor for something close to nine hundred years. Their motto was Meliore fide quam fortuna — better in faith than in fortune. One of them, from the Netherseal branch, grew up to design the Mallard.

Condition. Good and honestly worn. The morocco is rubbed overall with scuffing and pale surface marks to both boards, wear to the spine ends and corners, and some loss along the top edge of the front board. The gilt seal is bright and crisp. Internally clean and sound with light foxing, the Tennyson plate clean, the prize label intact. A handsome object that has plainly been read.

Part of the Gresley Collection. One of a kind — when it's gone, it's gone.

Free UK delivery. Hand-wrapped in stiff card and packing paper.