WACE; TAYLOR, Edgar.

£3,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Master Wace, His Chronicle of the Norman Conquest from the Roman de Rou. First edition, bound with the scarce suite of hand-coloured plates, signed by the author on the first blank. A later inscription has been added beneath his signature: "special copy belonging to the author's daughter, Jessie Hillebrand, Florence 1887". Edgar Taylor (1793-1839) translated, illustrated, and edited this edition of 350 copies. Twenty-five sets of the colour plates were issued in a separate volume.Hillebrand (1825-1905), previously Jessie Laussot, was Taylor's only child. In her youth she was Richard Wagner's lover, and later became a doyenne of the Florentine music scene, where she founded the first Italian choral society, the Società Cherubini, in 1860. This volume remained in the family until passing to John Porter (1929-2024), a pre-eminent collector of Pickering's works, whose bookplate is on the front pastedown. Porter's calligraphic note for his bibliography is loosely inserted, alongside this copy's sale information.

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