Maud

"Holiday Edition. IN ORIGINAL GIFT BOX. Unsigned binding design by Margaret Armstrong of a sundial surrounded by a flower arbor containing intertwined lilies and roses in gold on fine, diagonally ribbed white cloth. The titles and a repeat of the floral motif in gold on the spine. Top edge gilt. In original paper covered paste-board gift box with title label on one side. The paper covering the gift box has been stamped with a moiré pattern. The book includes unsigned endpapers, half title, title page, symbolic verse headers and 4 additional floral border designs for the text pages by Margaret Armstrong, as well as signed frontis. and 9 full page signed tinted drawings by Helen Maitland Armstrong. A romantic poem in the first person that follows the trials and tribulations of the narrator's love for Maud, whose love for him is denied by circumstance. This Armstrong production of Tennyson's Maud was released as a Holiday Gift Book during Christmas of 1905. This is the first reported instance of a white and gold variant of this book -- Gullans and Espey only mention the green cloth variant as does Minsky, PBO and UNCG. Although contemporary advertising Austin Abbey Rare Books has seen shows no production of a special deluxe variant of this Holiday edition, the paper quality and presentation do indicate that this may have been a non-limited special production." -- Austin Abbey Rare Books.

Photographs of binding from Watson Library Digital Collections: https://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16028coll17/id/3450