ONE OF ELEVEN COPIES ON VELLUM
The Works of Edmund Spenser
Shakespeare Head Press, 1930.
Eight volumes. Number 6 of 11 copies printed on vellum. Original publisher's vellum over card with red silk ties, lettered in red and black to the spines. Each volume housed in publisher's cloth box with red morocco spine. Title page in black and red with initials and section titles, designed by Joscelyne Gaskin, printed in blue and red. Marginal notes printed in red. 111 woodcut illustrations, head and tail pieces by Hilda Quick, all bar five hand coloured, many heightened with gold or silver. Frontispiece map of Ireland opposite engraved title page, both hand coloured with gold and silver highlights, in vol VIII. A fine set, exceptionally clean and crisp throughout with just the occasional browned spread in vol V. Original boxes with some joints worn.
The superb Shakespeare Head Spenser on vellum which stands with their Chaucer as the great achievements of the Press.
"The eight volumes of Spenser are equally good [as the Shakespeare Head Chaucer] different, as the character of the author is, but in merit nothing to chose between them... Perhaps the small devices below Spenser's sonnets, printed in black and in the vellum copies beautifully laid with gold, are the most discreet and opulent form of decoration, fitting and in flawless taste. They recur too in the wedding poems. At the end one feels this to be, in his own words 'a goodly ornament / And for a short time an endless monument'" (Franklin, The Private Presses p 150).
Stock ID: 44924
£60,000.00
