GARDINER, Samuel Rawson.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Oliver Cromwell. First edition, number 495 of 1,475 copies on fine paper, of Gardiner's sympathetic biography, issued in a luxurious, extensively illustrated format and here elaborately bound by Zaehnsdorf.A further 350 copies were issued on Japanese paper. An octavo trade edition followed in 1900. For the first edition, "These volumes have become highly collectable and are rarely to be found in public or university libraries" (Nixon, p. xiii)."Gardiner's Oliver Cromwell... contains the mature reflections of one of the most learned of all students of seventeenth-century British history. That is why it is worth reading again now. Though he recognized that Cromwell had his faults, Gardiner admired him profoundly. He said of his hero: 'He stands forth as the typical Englishman of the modern world'" (Ashley, p. 9).

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