This book is also titled "Gray's Elegy", it was written by Thomas Gray, published in London in 1846 by Longman and Co. and in New York by Wiley and Putnam, and illuminated by Owen Jones. The leather binding is embossed in a holly leaf pattern and in high relief called "relievo", the pages are chromolithographed to give the appearance of an illuminated manuscript, with pale yellow endpapers, a front flyleaf is inscribed "C. P. Saltonstall, from her Sincere friend. Lucy O. Bowditch", the title page is decorated in a floral pattern with Christmas colors, the book is unpaginated, but there are 33 pages of text and a leaf at the end with the monogram of Owen Jones, an ad for "The Grammar of Ornament" by Owen Jones on the last paste-down, and all the edges are gilt. The London firm of Remnant & Edmonds used a method of binding whereby they were able to imitate carved wood on leather; they used a powerful embossing press where a a pattern was heated onto the leather, and Owen Jones did the illumination for the book. The book is not stamped "Remnant & Edmonds", but this is what their bindings would have looked like, and not many copies with relievo bindings by Remnant & Edmonds have survived. Owen Jones (1809 - 1874) was an English architect born in London with Welsh roots and a designer who profoundly influenced book ornamentation in the 1800's. He studied Islamic decoration at the Alhambra; the standard of colour printing at that time was not sophisticated enough to do justice to the intricate decoration of the Alhambra, so he collaborated with chemists and printers to research the new process of chromolithography, and over a ten year period (from 1836 1o 1845) he issued Plans, Elevations, Sections and Details of the Alhambra in twelve parts, and this was the world's first ever published work of any significance to employ chromolithography. Jones undertook the printing work himself and was able to enter the lucrative market for illustrated and illuminated gift books which were becoming popular with the Victorian middle class. Jones was also a pivotal figure in the formation of the South Kensington Museum (later to become the Victoria and Albert Museum). The book is illuminated with a Gothic or medieval style and measures 9 7/8 x 7 in. wide, the binding is tight and solid, with great colors and clean text, small spots in the top corner of the title page, there's rubbing on the spine and wear at the heel, light rubbing on the borders around the edges of the covers and on the inner borders that surround the title on the front cover and the center decoration on the back cover, and rubbing and light wear at the tips, and a rare example of a relievo binding for a book with illuminated pages by a pioneer in the use of chromolithography, and one of the most popular poems in the English language. #79 #1695