ESSEX HOUSE PRESS: MILTON, John.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Comus. First Essex House Press edition, number 41 of 150 copies printed on vellum and hand illuminated. The frontispiece is by Reginald Savage, his named added in manuscript on the limitation page. Milton's masque was first presented on Michaelmas 1634 and was first printed, anonymously, in 1637. It is presented here as the eighth work in the Essex House Press Great Poems Series.The Essex House Press was founded by Charles Robert Ashbee and Laurence Hodson following the closure of William Morris's Kelmscott Press in 1897 and "came from the heart of the arts and crafts movement" (Franklin, p. 64). Ashbee bought the Kelmscott Press's Albion printing presses after Morris's death, and employed one of the Kelmscott compositors, Thomas Binning. In 1902 "a bindery was established in the Guild, under the direction of Annie Power, who had been a student of Douglas Cockerell" (Crawford, p. 400). The illuminated letters for this work were provided by Florence Kingsford Cockerell (1871-1949), one of the leading book illuminators of the English arts and crafts movement. Kingsford Cockerell studied calligraphy under Edward Johnston and predominantly worked for the Ashendene Press.

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