Faust: A Dramatic Poem, By Goethe. Translated into English Prose, with Remarks on Former Translations, and Notes, by A. Hayward, Esq. Second Edition, to which is appended an abstract of the continuation, with an account of the story of Faust and the various productions in literature and art founded on it by GOETHE

London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street. MDCCCXXXIV 1834. SECOND EDITION. 8vo, 216 x 130 mms., pp cviii, 350, [351 errata, 352 colophon], bound c.1900 by Riviere in half red polished calf, cloth sides; raised bands on spine; the spine colour is somewhat mottled, but else a fine, clean copy; along the top margin of the title-page, there is a neat contemporary inscription, "The Rt. Honble. / Sir Robert Peel. Bart.", the owner, then, being the Prime Minister at the time, Sir Robert Peel, 2nd baronet (1788-1850), who took office for his first term in 1834, the year this edition was published. There can hardly be a more appealing association copy from the first year of Robert Peel's reign as Prime Minister, and dating to just before the beginning of the Victorian Era. Peel was, after all, compared to Faust in the contemporary press, and the author of this translation, Abraham Hayward (1801-1884), was personally well known to both Robert Peel and his wife Lady Emily, who both appear in Hayward's published correspondence. Hayward's translation into English of Goethe's great work Faust was renowned in the early nineteenth century, with Germans and Britons alike full of vocal appreciation for it. To Germans the translation of Faust by Hayward was "word true and spirit true", and in "later years Thomas Carlyle remarked that of the nineteen translations of 'Faust' then existing," it was Hayward's that "was the best" (Henry E. Carlisle, ed., A Selection from the Correspondence of Abraham Hayward, Q.C., from 1834 to 1884, with an Account of His Early Life (London, 1886), vol. 1, p. 19). Recent revivified interest in Abraham Hayward, as an influential figure of the nineteenth century, includes a study of nearly five hundred pages by Antony Chessell, titled The Life and Times of Abraham Hayward, Q.C., Victorian Essayist (2009), wherein one may find many references made to Faust and to Peel (and not always co-extensively). As a long subtitle to his book, Chessell adds the contemporary quote asserting that Hayward was "One of the Two Best Read Men in England". Abraham Hayward (1801-1884) was a translator, essayist, poet, legal writer, and, not least, a top lawyer, as Hayward was elevated to the status of Q.C., or Queen's Counsel, in 1845, an indication of surpassingly high legal expertise, although the Oxford DNB, eccentrically, does not mention this promotion. The Oxford DNB does, however, mention that Hayward was a Peelite, detailing some of his efforts to make a "notable contribution to the Peelite cause". The Oxford DNB also notes that it was Hayward's decision to translate Goethe's Faust that "launched him into a literary career. His translation was admired and brought him to public notice in Germany and at home, gaining him admittance into the salons of the German, British, and French capitals. Congratulations were sent to him from poets such as Wordsworth, Southey, and Samuel Rogers…." This second edition of Hayward's Faust is the first edition for which Abraham Hayward allowed his name onto the title-page, and it was the first version for sale. The preceding edition, from 1833, was simply a version done for private circulation, and it was printed under initials only, with Hayward signing "A. H." at the end of the preface. The bibliographer John Martin asserts that the 1833 edition was "not published" and was printed for "private distribution" only; Martin cites Hayward himself as saying that the whole of the print run of the 1833 version was circulated exclusively "amongst my acquaintance" (Bibliographical Catalogue of Privately Printed Books, 2nd edition (1854), pp. 446-7). This copy, being from the library of the contemporaneous Prime Minister, has much to recommend it, but we might add as well that no doubt the popularity of Hayward's translation of Faust in his lifetime meant that presumably readers enthusiastically read and re-read their copies, because many a copy of the first and second edition are in terrible shape today. By contrast, the condition of the present copy remains very good to fine. Perhaps Peel read it just once, and retained it. After all, Peel was credited with having "an exact memory" (Britannica online).