FIRDAWSI, Abu-l-Qasim Mansur.

£1,250 · Offered by Peter Harrington

Episodes from the Shah Nameh; First edition of Weston's translation, an attractive copy in the original boards, inscribed by the translator on the front free endpaper "From ye Author to Earl Compton", and further annotated by him. It was privately printed and although reasonably well represented institutionally is decidedly scarce in commerce, with just three copies showing on auction records in the last 120 years.After education at Eton and Exeter College, Oxford, Stephen Weston (1747-1830), antiquary, philologist, and classical scholar, accompanied Sir Charles Warwick Bampfylde of Devon as tutor on an extended Grand Tour. He was a regular contributor to Archaeologia, the Gentleman's Magazine, and the Classical Journal. Weston has noted on the page advertising the edition of the Shahnama "now printing in Calcutta" that it has been "discontinued. On acc[oun]t of ye enormous expence [sic], & wretched execution". He has also made two neat corrections to the final leaf (alongside a short section that has been neatly excised).The recipient, Spencer Joshua Alwyne Compton, second marquess of Northampton (1790-1851), was a patron of science and the arts. Both Weston and Compton were members of the Royal Society, and "as president of the Royal Society [Compton] was distinguished by his kindness, courtesy, good humour, patience, responsibility, and tact, as well as by his splendid hospitality, mastery of continental languages, and cultured mind" (ODNB). He shared Weston's profound int

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