£150
PRESENTATION COPY, small 4to, pp. xv, [i], 90, [4] + mounted colour frontispiece. 2 mounted colour vignettes included within pagination. Original cream cloth, front board blocked in gilt, spine lettered direct in gilt. Just a touch of foxing. Binding lightly soiled, spine toned. Presentation inscription to flyleaf: ‘To Pat & Mary Cooper, with love from Mary (Warrack) Milne. March 1915’, ownership inscription of P.A.C. below dated 1924.
A scarce and attractive anthology of poetry edited by May Warrack, sister of Grace Warrack, translator and editor, whose 1901 modern English translation of Julian of Norwich was illustrated by celebrated artist Phoebe Anna Traquair, which began a social and professional partnership between the Warrack and Traquair families over the next few decades. This is the second Warrack anthology illustrated by Traquair, following an earlier effort edited by Grace.
'Published near the beginning of the War, Song in the Night was also intended to provide Christian spiritual sustenance for abandoned or grieving families at home. Still heavily Italianate in spirit, the texts were drawn from Donne, Dante, the Rossettis, Blake, Tennyson, Herbert, the Brownings, Thomas a Kempis, Stevenson and Warrack herself. It seems possible that Traquair assisted with the literary selection. All three illustrations were taken from Traquair paintings. Can Ye Drink of the Cup that I Drink of? was a reworking of the panel in the mortuary chapel decoration; Love and the Pilgrim reused the watercolour illustrated in Floregio di Canti Toscani; and finally Love the Comforter at Night was adapted from an enamel design of nearly a decade earlier' (Cumming, 'Phoebe Anna Traquair HRSA (1852-1936) and her Contribution to Arts and Crafts in Edinburgh' University of Edinburgh 1986). Library Hub records 5 copies: NLS, Cambridge, TCD, Oxford and BL.
This copy has been inscribed to the flyleaf by Warrack.
