SPENSER, Edmund (1552?-1599). Complaints. Containing sundrie small poemes of the worlds vanitie. London: William Ponsonbie, 1591. 4 parts in one volume, 4° (175 x 125mm). General title with emblematic woodcut border repeated for the 3 sectional titles, woodcut ornaments. (Title holed with minor loss to left-hand border and repaired, also extended at outer margin, and with slight dampstaining and small repairs at upper margin, I1r slightly soiled at margin, some headlines shaved, small stain on Q2r, Q4 with old repair to tears at lower corner, V2 with repair at upper corner, final leaves M2-3 with discrete marginal repairs, without blank M4). Early 20th-century brown morocco, covers stamped in gilt with the armorial of the Society of Writers to the Signet (spine rubbed, bookplate removed from front pastedown), g.e. Provenance: Latin inscription on title to the third part, occasional marginalia in the same hand and some underlining and scoring of text throughout -- Epistle to the third part with two-line quotation from the 'Ruines of Time' in a copperplate hand -- Society of Writers to the Signet (binding). FIRST EDITION of this collection of nine minor poems by Spenser. The three sectional titles read: The Teares of the Muses; Prosopopoia. Or Mother Hubberds Tale; and Muiopotmos, or the Fate of the Butterflie (dated 1590). Johnson 14; Langland to Wither 235; Pforzheimer 968; STC 23078. Illustrated on the front cover of this catalogue.