First edition thus, ordinary paper issue. The soldier and poet Richard Lovelace (1617-1657) was educated at Charterhouse School and Gloucester Hall, Oxford, where he began to write both plays and poetry, which circulated in manuscript and then began to appear in print. Lovelace’s royalist allegiances led to his incarceration at various times during the Civil War and Commonwealth, and a period of imprisonment at Peter House in London between 1648 and 1649 enabled him to prepare some of his poems for the press. Following his release, these poems were published as Lucasta: Epodes, Odes, Sonnets, Songs, &c. To which is Added Aramantha, a Pastorall in 1649, with commendatory verses by the author’s friend Andrew Marvell and others. Much of Lovelace’s wealth had been expended in support of the Royalist cause, and his final years appear to have been spent in penury. After Lovelace’s death in 1657, his brother Dudley Posthumus Lovelace published a second collection of poems, under the title Lucasta: Posthume Poems (London, 1659-1660), which included ‘Elegies Sacred to the Memory of the Author: by Several of his Friends’.

This edition was prepared by the bibliographer and author W. Carew Hazlitt (1834-1913), a grandson of the essayist, and it collects the poems of Lucasta: Epodes, Odes, Sonnets, Songs, &c. To which is Added Aramantha, a Pastorall and Lucasta: Posthume Poems, which are prefaced by a substantial ‘Biographical Notice’. In his ‘Introduction’ Hazlitt explains that he has removed the ‘gross corruptions’ found in earlier printings of Lovelace’s poems (p. [vii]), and also grouped the pieces in a more systematic arrangement. Hazlitt also included type-facsimiles of the title-pages of the two collections and the part-title to ‘Elegies Sacred to the Memory of the Author: by Several of his Friends’, and reproduced four engravings from the original editions: additional titles to Lucasta: Epodes, Odes, Sonnets, Songs, &c. To which is Added Aramantha, a Pastorall and ‘Elegies Sacred to the Memory of the Author: by Several of his Friends’, both engraved by William Faithorne after a design by Lovelace’s friend Sir Peter Lely; an engraving of ‘Lucasta’ (i.e. Lucy Sacheverell) by Faithorne after Lely; and a portrait of the author after his brother, Francis Lovelace.

Hazlitt’s edition first appeared in this form as part of the ‘Library of Old Authors’ published by the bookseller, antiquarian, and bibliographer John Russell Smith, and, according to a contemporary advertisement, Lucasta was issued in a cloth binding in ordinary copies at 5s. (as here) and also in large-paper copies at 7s. 6d. (The Athenaeum, no 1898 (12 March 1864), p. 354).

A Bookman’s Catalogue: The Norman Colbeck Collection, p. 360 (in the original cloth, with advertisements printed on the front endpapers, unlike the present copy).