8vo. Wood-engraved vignettes throughout. Original publisher’s grey cloth, spine lettered and decorated in gilt and brown, upper cover and decorated with crossed swords and arabesques, uncut and unopened (some very minor soiling). Provenance: Bernard Coleridge, 2nd Baron Coleridge (1851-1927), British lawyer and politician, great grandnephew of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (armorial bookplate).

 

FIRST EDITION of Burton’s history of the sword as a weapon, intended to be the first of a three-volume work. "The history of the Sword is the history of humanity," he wrote, but his book "fell still-born on the public." On his death, his manuscript notes were so incomplete that no publisher would publish the subsequent volumes.  Casada 27; Penzer, pp. 107-112 (“very scarce”).