ENGLISH SONGS AND OTHER SMALL POEMS - 1844

London: Edward Moxon, 1844.. 12mo. Contemporary three-quarter morocco and marbled boards. Binding rather rubbed and edgeworn, otherwise a good copy, with Charles Dickens' lion bookplate and the Gadshill label at the front, and with the bookplate of John Gribbel at the back. Old bookseller's description tipped in front. The second edition, in which Procter took the opportunity "to strike out about forty of the poems (of inferior quality) contained in the old volume, and to introduce, in their stead, nearly seventy Poems, in rhyme, besides a considerable quantity of Dramatic verse" - "Preface to the Present Edition," dated "April 13th 1844." A presentation copy, inscribed on the title-page: "Charles Dickens / with the best Regards of / The Author." In THE DICKENS CIRCLE (New York, 1919, p. 169), J.W.T. Ley states: "We may take it as quite certain that Dickens came to know Procter through Forster. And from the first the novelist and the poet were on the best of terms. It was natural. Procter was a peculiarly lovable man, with a peculiar gentleness, 'childlike, without being childish, and an unfailing buoyancy of spirit.' Such a man could not but have a strong attraction for Dickens. From the beginning he loved the company of his friend, who, in the 'forties, was one of the innermost circle with Forster and Maclise and Ainsworth. Procter was one of the little company at the Greenwich dinner in 1842, and until he grew too old (he was twenty-five years older than Dickens) they had frequent social meetings. For HOUSEHOLD WORDS and ALL THE YEAR ROUND he wrote a great deal, and Dickens valued his contributions very highly indeed . . . As Procter grew old Dickens saw less and less of him, but the friendship remained as deep as ever, and in 1854 it was peculiarly sweetened by the discovery that the 'Miss Mary Berwick' who had contributed verses to HOUSEHOLD WORDS which had won Dickens's unstinted praise was really his old friend's daughter, Adelaide, whom he had known from her childhood."