Physical description

Hard cover book. Reliques of Ancient English Poetry
Author: Thomas Percy
Publisher: George Routledge
Editor: Robert Aris Willmott
Illustrator: Edward Corbould
Date: 1857
Further Information: Green Cloth hardcover with lettering and patterning to spine in gilt. The spine has a Library label with an inscription.

Publication type

fiction

Inscriptions & markings

The label on the spine with typed text PAT 821 PER
Paste down front end paper has a sticker from Warrnambool Public Library covered by a sticker from Corangamite Regional Library Service. Front loose end paper has a stamp from Corangamite Regional Library Service

Summary

The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry is a collection of ballads and popular songs collected by Bishop Thomas Percy and first published in 1765. Its foundation was a manuscript that became known as the Percy Folio, which Percy discovered in the house of his friend Humphrey Pitt at Shifnal, Shropshire famously found on the floor, with the housemaid using its leaves to light fires. Percy used only forty-five of the folio's ballads in his final book, supplementing them with material from other manuscripts, printed broadsides, and, controversially, some of his own composition or heavy "improvements" of the originals. The three original volumes gather old heroic ballads, songs, romances and historical poetry covering subjects such as border warfare, the supernatural, and the legends of King Arthur and Robin Hood, including famous pieces like 'Chevy Chase' and 'Sir Patrick Spens' a collection of ballads and romances dating from the late medieval period to the seventeenth century, each annotated with Percy's antiquarian commentary.