Ellis (Frederick Startridge, bookseller and author, friend of the Pre-Raphaelites, 1830-1901) [Fairy Tales in Verse from Grimm Brothers], autograph manuscript signed, 143pp., written on rectos only, numerous crossings out and corrections, autograph manuscript poem: "To Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792-1892 For the Shelley Centenary" loosely inserted and initialled "E.", browned, original cloth, remains of paper label on spine, sm. 4to, F.S. Ellis, Chelston, Torquay, 8th October 1894.

⁂ Unpublished.

"For many years Ellis was official buyer for the British Museum, which brought him into rivalry with trade opponents in the auction rooms. He was also commissioned to edit the catalogue of Henry Huth's famous library, which was printed in 1880 in five volumes. Ellis was a publisher on a limited scale, and brought out the works of William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, with whom he was on terms of close friendship. Among other friends were A. C. Swinburne, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, and John Ruskin, whose Stray Letters to a London Bibliopole were addressed to Ellis and republished by him in 1892. Ruskin called him Papa Ellis (E. T. Cook, Life of John Ruskin, 1911, 1.371). It was in 1864 that William Morris was first introduced by Swinburne to Ellis, who later took over from Dante Gabriel Rossetti the joint tenancy, with Morris, of Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire. They shared an enthusiasm for fishing. Ellis advised Morris on his purchases of manuscripts. In Morris's last illness in 1896 he was with him every day, discussing a projected edition of the Border Ballads, and Ellis was one of the poet's executors (J. W. Mackail, Life of W. Morris, 1899, 1.193)." - Oxford DNB.