8vo. [2], xviii, 763pp, [1]. With a half-title and an engraved portrait frontispiece. Bound by R. Hering and Muller (stamp-signed to spine) in contemporary gilt-tooled calf, marbled edges, marbled endpapers. A trifle rubbed and marked, spine sunned. William St Clair's copy, with his pencilled ownership inscription to verso of FFEP.

The first Parisian edition, strikingly bound, of the complete works of Robert Southey. Printing single-volume collected editions of the romantics in the late 1820s Paris, Galignani proudly advertised 'Splendid Editions. Cheapness and portability. 200 Volumes compressed into 15 Volumes Octavo, and at One Sixth of the London Prices; beautifully printed on super-fine hot-pressed paper'. In addition, otherwise suppressed poems frequently were collected against the wishes of their authors. In the case of Southey, the seditious 'Wat Tyler' appears here despite the legal action brought against William Hone on its appearance in 1817.

As to the rather elusive binders, Hering and Muller, Ramsden comments on the former:

'The initial "r", though not recorded in the Almanachs, is said to occur on individual bindings, or on bindings signed R, Hering and Müller...It would greatly help if one could trace an undoubted signature of "R" Hering.'

and of the latter:

'It is almost as difficult to follow this binder (or binders) as to trace the Herings...Muller seems to have worked with Hering between 1821-26 (and even again about 1834) and then possibly about 1826 joined Thouvenin, who states that it was only by about 1830 that he was able to build up a really competent team of binders.'

William St Clair (1937-2021), British scholar and senior civil servant, notable as the author of The Godwins and the Shelleys, The Biography of a Family (1989) and The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (2004).