‘The Defence of Guenevere’, Morris’s first volume of poems, was originally published by Bell & Daldy 1858. Owing to a number of errors in this first edition an errata slip was included in this first edition. However, when the book was reprinted by Ellis & White in 1875, these errors were not wholly corrected and many of them also appear in the text of the Kelmscott Press edition. This was the first Kelmscott Press book to be bound in limp vellum and the only one in which the title was inscribed by hand on the spine. This copy was given by William Morris to his good friend Georgian Burne-Jones and is inscribed by him with the date 22nd May 1892. 300 copies were printed on paper at 2 guineas, 10 on vellum at about 12 guineas and sold by Reeves & Turner.
