Astrophel and Stella

Printed in 1591, this Elizabethan sequence of 108 sonnets and eleven songs presents the speaker Astrophel in pursuit of Stella, a married woman whose living model is usually taken to be Penelope Rich. The poems move through hope, argument, jealousy, and self-reproach as Astrophel tries to turn desire into verse and virtue into an excuse. Stella's eyes, the court, sleep, and the act of writing itself become the sequence's recurring stages. It is lyric rather than narrative: a dramatised private passion in the Petrarchan manner, spoken by a knight-poet who cannot resolve the conflict between honour and appetite.

Quarter bound in grey red leather with pale grey cloth boards. Variant bindings of smooth or coarse cloth. Grey slipcase.