A London Rose and Other Rhymes.

Pictorial title page and binding design by Selwyn Image. First edition, one of 500 copies (actually 576, per Nelson 1894.14/87). 8vo., original brown cloth. London: Elkin Mathews and John Lane; New York: Dodd, Mead and Co.,

With a really charming inscription to fellow poetaster Austin Dobson, in the form of a 13 line poem, whose content refers to Dobson's book At the Sign of the Lyre and to Rhys's own Rhymers' Club, and whose form resembles a rondel but with a modified and opportunistic rhyming pattern. The poem suggests that if Rhys has only one appreciative reader, and that was Dobson, that would be fine: "And not in vain the nights were pass'd / in many a lyric late carouse" If "The fates have one such listener lent / to Rhys the Rhymer's testament!"

The only mention that Dobson gets in Alford is an exemplar of what the Rhymers' Club were opposed to, with their rather formal decorative verse on rigid French patterns. 

A fine copy with Dobson's fine bookplate by his friend and collaborate E.A. Abbey.

Stock Code: 237988