£60
SOLE EDITION, 8vo, pp. x, [ii], 142, [2]. Contemporary black cloth. A little spotting and soiling, running stain to bottom corner of first few leaves. Somewhat soiled and marked, some wear to edges particularly head of spine. Pencil proofing notes throughout.
A poetry collection by James Traill Calder (1794-1864), best-remembered today for his 1861 history of his native Caithness. The title-poem is based on the wife of George Sinclair, nephew to the Earl of Caithness and a soldier of fortune who died in the 1612 Battle of Kringen in the Kalmar War; he is also commemorated in Norwegian and Faroese folk ballads. This copy has been extensively annotated with detailed typographical corrections, highlighting misaligned and broken type as well as dropped punctuation, as a printer's proof would be, but none of the corrections appear to have been made in the Bodleian copy upon comparison, and no second edition ever materialised. A scarce thing, with Library Hub recording just 4 copies, at the BL, NLS and Edinburgh alongside the aforementioned Bodleian copy.
