CATULLUS, TIBULLUS and PROPERTIUS [with] JUVENAL and PERSIUS

£12,500 · Offered by Sokol Books

A fine volume with two clean and remarkable editions of Latin classic poetry. The first is an early reprint of the 1502 ground-breaking Aldine edition in octavo of Catullus, Tibullus and Propertius, who were, together with Ovid, the main lyric poets of the first century BC. In their innovative verses, they focused on personal matters and day-to-day images, dwelling on the passionate feeling for their lovers. This is the first edition published by Simon de Colines (c.1480 -1546), a highly skilled printer who was trained by Henry Estienne, led the Estienne workshop until Robert entered the business in 1526 and then became an independent and distinguished publisher in Paris. He was renowned for the beauty of his Roman, Greek and Italic fonts, often modelled on Aldus s types. In this book, he employed the famous Saint Augustin flourished italics. The second part of the volume comprises an exceptionally bright copy of the genuine 1501 Aldine edition of two masters of Latin satire, Juvenal (c.55-127 AD) and Persius (34-62 AD). This publication (not to be confused with an almost identical imprint issued some twelve years later by the Aldine) was the fourth ever printed classic in the renowned octavo series with Griffo s italic font, soon after Virgil, Petrarch and Horace. The book has an interesting early English provenance connected to the seventeenth-century academia in Oxford. Henry Bracegirdle bought it in Oxford on 6 December 1660 and then read it over and over, drafting margin

• Printing: later
• Binding: Hardcover

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.