113 volumes (of 130). Principle editor Francis J. Child. (12mo) uniformly bound in brown half morocco and marbled boards, gilt-lettered spines with four raised bands, all edges marbled.

Little Brown initiated their extraordinarily ambitious series in 1853, “taking generally for their guide…the well-edited and universally accredited collection of the Poets issued by Pickering, ‘the English disciple of Aldus’, they have extended their plans greatly beyond the limits of the foreign publisher. His series embraced but some forty or fifty volumes; that of the Boston house is rapidly advancing toward a hundred” from a contemporary New York Times review. As of 1860, the American Publisher’s Circular and Literary Gazette listed 100 volumes. In 1866, Ticknor and Fields announced that they had “bought from Little, Brown and Company, the stereotype plates and the entire stock of the important and valuable series of books known as ‘The British Poets’. This edition, prepared at great expense and with the utmost care, is the most complete and desirable collection of British poetry extant and both in plan and execution has reflected great credit upon its projectors, Little, Brown and Company…. The set is now comprised of one hundred thirty volumes” (American Literary Gazette and Publisher’s Circular, 1866). The set here offered is complete through 1860, with all the volumes referenced in the 1860 notice plus three volumes of Burns and ten volumes of Southey. In all, there are 40 poets and eight volumes of English and Scottish Ballads. Poets included are Akenside, Beattie, Burns, Butler, Campbell, Chatterton, Churchill, Coleridge, Collins, Cowper, Donne, Dryden, English and Scottish Ballads, Falconer, Gay, Goldsmith, Gray, Herbert, Herrick, Hood, Keats, Marvell, Milton, Moore, Parnell/Tickell, Pope, Prior, Scott, Shakespeare, Shelley, Skelton, Southey, Spenser, Surrey, Swift, Thomson, Vaughan, Watt, White, Wordsworth, Wyatt and Young. A few very light scuffs, else a fine set, with all volumes sound, clean and beautifully bound. A wonderful find!