Sold at $4800 (£3840) was one of 250 copies of When Adam Delved and Eve Span…, a scarce Kelmscott Press item produced in 1894-95.
Running to just four pages, it presented two poems by Tennyson and prose by John Ruskin, along with the large woodcut illustration by Edward Burne-Jones seen here, and was produced for the Ancoats Brotherhood.
Founded by Charles Rowley in 1878, this Manchester society’s aim was to bring art and literature to the area, and to improve the social conditions of the working class.
Lecturers included the press founder, William Morris, the artist Ford Madox Brown and George Bernard Shaw, who once remarked that Rowley was “the only man who could induce any sane man to go to Manchester”.
This copy was accompanied by three draft Kelmscott prospectuses of December 1892, each of four pages on a single folding sheet and accompanied by a number of notes and emendations.
The sale took place on June 23.
