8vo. [2], 5ff, 344, [1], 1-337pp, [1]. With half-title to Vol. I, without title, half-title and preliminaries to Vol II. Annotated throughout by the author in manuscript, with corrections, alterations and additions. Contemporary gilt-tooled tan half- calf. Marbled endpapers. Worn, with upper board detached. Inscribed 'Mr Stopford Brooke proofs with his own corrections' to blank fly-leaf, numerous ink-stamps and date-stamps of the printers to margins, throughout.

The author's proofs, with sometimes extensive corrections, of a definitive study of Old English literature by Stopford Augustus Brooke (1832-1916), Irish clergyman and chaplain-in-ordinary to Queen Victoria. A prodigious and popular literary scholar, Brooke published several guides and primers to the history of English literature, in addition to monographs on, inter alia, Browning, Milton, Tennyson and Shakespeare.

The manuscript corrections - often extensive - in this, the author's own set of pre-publican proofs, later used by the volume's printers, B&R. Clark, were incorporated into the final text. Marginal notes (some evidently shaved on binding) suggest that the publisher's requested 'Revis[ions....] of the 2 vols...Wanted by the 7th Aug'; printer's dated ink-stamps of May to July 1892 suggest that Brooke, by this time an accomplished scholar and much-published author, was able to meet this despite the sometimes significant changes