The Courtship of Miles Standish and Other Poems

First Edition. All points of issue for first printing present. (BAL 12122; Livingston & Chamberlain 60.) 12mo, 215 pp. followed by 12 pp. publisher’s advertisements. Brown blind stamped cloth covered boards, gilt lettering at spine, brown endpapers. Includes publisher’s inserted advertisement at front for the Waverly Novels. Apparent previous restoration at head with new partial inlay or backstrip added. Previous ownership inscription in pencil at flyleaf. Just about Near Fine. Longfellow first crafted the narrative of the life of the Puritans as a drama (play format), and eventually decided, “I begin a new poem ‘Priscilla’; to be a kind of Puritan pastoral; the subject, the courtship of Miles Standish. This, I think, will be a better treatment of the subject than the dramatic one I wrote some time ago.”