Madoc.

London, Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, and Edinburgh: A Constable by James Ballantyne, 1805.. FIRST EDITION. Large 4° (27.8 x 22 cm.), Twentieth century (second half) full calf, spine (faded to tan) gilt with slightly raised bands in six compartments, black leather lettering pieces in second and fourth compartments from head, gilt ruled design on covers with florins at corners, marbled endleaves, text block edges marbled from an early binding. Some light browning and scattered foxing. In good to very good condition. Engraved plate, engraved title page, (1 l.), vii-xii pp., second engraved title page, 557 pp. *** FIRST EDITION of one of the future poet laureate's major, relatively early works.Madoc, also spelled Madog, ab Owain Gwynedd was, according to folklore, a Welsh prince who sailed to America in 1170, over three hundred years before Columbus's voyage in 1492. According to the story, he was a son of Owain Gwynedd, and took to the sea to flee internecine violence at home. Madoc's legend has been a notable subject for poets. The most famous account in English is this long 1805 poem by Robert Southey, which uses the story to explore the poet's freethinking and egalitarian ideals. Southey wrote Madoc to help finance a trip of his own to America, where he and Samuel Taylor Coleridge hoped to establish a Utopian state they called a "Pantisocracy". Southey's poem in turn inspired the twentieth-century poet Paul Muldoon to write Madoc: A Mystery, which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1992. It explores what may have happened if Southey and Coleridge had succeeded in coming to America to found their "ideal state".*** Haller p. 316: Simmons 13: "None of the three copies which I have examined contains both the title-pages." Not in Tinker.