Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832)

Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field

Edinburgh: Archibald Constable and Company, 1811

8vo., (8 x 5 inches). Half-title. Fine binding of scarlet morocco, each cover decorated with broad borders of blind roll tools, hached gilt fillets with very fine elaborate gilt-corner-pieces, the spine in six compartments, with five gilt hached raised bands, gilt-lettered in the second, and tooled in gilt and blind in the others, all edges gilt, in the style of Charles Meyer (see BL Database of Bookbindings shelfmark 133e1) (extremities a bit scuffed).

Provenance: with the contemporary engraved armorial bookplate of Christopher Willoughby, presumably Sir Christopher William Willoughby, 2nd Baronet (1793–1813), on the front paste-down.

Seventh edition, and an attractive copy in a fine binding in the style of Charles Meyer, (also known as Johan Charles Frederick Meyer), who "was one of a select and influential group of German binders who emigrated to England ...in 1797, and set up shop around the corner in St Martin’s Lane. He was later to become ‘Bookseller and binder to the Queen [Charlotte] and Princesses.’" (P. J. M. Marks, Curator of Bookbindings, British Library).