The Science of Aspects, uskin and Hopkins, Patricia M. Ball — 1st Edition

The Science of Aspects: The Changing Role of Fact in the Work of Coleridge, Ruskin and Hopkins, Patricia M. Ball — First Edition

Publication: London, The Athlone Press (University of London), 1971

Formatting: 8vo, pp. x, 163.

Condition Report: Good. The volume remains firmly bound in its original deep teal cloth, with the gilt spine lettering remaining notably bright and unoxidised. As a former institutional copy, it exhibits typical library interventions, including clear adhesive shadows to the boards where the dust jacket was previously secured, a City of Liverpool Public Libraries armorial bookplate to the front pastedown, and withdrawn ink stamps to the preliminary pages, including the title and copyright pages. The text block is otherwise remarkably clean, bright, and free from internal foxing or significant handling wear, presenting a tight and highly legible reading copy. The original light blue dust jacket is unclipped, retaining the £2.50 net price on the front flap, and presents well in a protective sleeve; it shows only minor edge-wear and a subtle shadow to the lower spine, remaining overall a highly presentable example despite its institutional provenance.

Catalogue Note: This is the true first edition of Patricia M. Ball’s respected academic study. The text is supplemented by a monochromatic frontispiece that visually anchors the book's themes of natural observation and empirical detail.

The book's provenance is established by the institutional markings of the City of Liverpool Public Libraries, formally bearing "Withdrawn" stamps to signify its legitimate release into the open market. While ex-library copies of niche academic texts from this era occasionally appear, finding the original hardcover printing with a well-preserved, unclipped dust jacket is increasingly uncommon, as many institutional copies were either heavily rebound, laminated, or permanently stripped of their wrappers.

In The Science of Aspects, Patricia M. Ball explores the profound shift in creative vision that emerged during the nineteenth century, tracing the evolving relationship between objective fact and subjective imagination. By closely examining the journals, notebooks, and published works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Ruskin, and Gerard Manley Hopkins, Ball illuminates how each writer grappled with the empirical observation of nature and the internal landscape of the mind. Her perceptive analysis reveals a dialectical progression from Coleridge's integration of external fact into inner experience, through Ruskin's objective devotion to visual truth, and finally to Hopkins's synthesis of the two, offering a vital framework for understanding the transition from Romanticism to Victorian poetics.