Henry. Reliquiae Wottonianae. Or, A collection of lives, letters, poems; with characters of sundry personages: and other incomparable pieces of language and art. By the curious Pensil of the Ever Memo

by WOTTON

£1,500 · Offered by Henry Sotheran Ltd

WOTTON, Henry. Reliquiae Wottonianae. Or, A collection of lives, letters, poems; with characters of sundry personages: and other incomparable pieces of language and art. By the curious Pensil of the Ever Memorable Sr Henry Wotton Kt, Late, Provost of Eton Colledg. London: printed by Thomas Maxey, for R. Marriot, G. Bedel, and T. Garthwait. 1651. 12mo. Contemporary sheep, covers with double fillet borders in blind, rebacked, flat spine blind-ruled in compartments, gilt lettering direct; pp. [60], 540, with 4 engraved portraits, frontispiece engraving of author by Pierre Lombart (1613-181) (outer margin slightly trimmed as usual), portrait of George Villiers trimmed and mounted (shaving caption), title with typographic border of fleurons, woodcut initials and typographic headpieces; moderate wear to boards and corners, lighter square patch to spine, pages bright and clean; overall a very good copy; neat contemporary marginal annotations in ink, predominantly to “A Surveigeh of Education” (pp. 315-35), small tear to upper corner of N12; elegant and intricate diagram of a staircase (“A Stayrecase”) in the same hand to the first blank ( see below ). First edition of this wonderfully various, posthumously published, Collected Works. The Reliquiae , essentially a posthumous Collected Works, amounts to a portrait of an exemplary Renaissance English gentleman (“the most widely cultivated Englishman of his time” [Pearsall Smith]). Compiled by Wotton’s friend and fishing companion, Issa

• Binding: Hardcover

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