COSWAY-STYLE BINDING - SHAKESPEARE, William.

£5,750 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Venus and Adonis; Lucrece; The Passionate Pilgrim; Pericles; Sonnets. Signed limited edition of Venus and Adonis, number 634 of 1,000 copies signed by the editor Sidney Lee. This facsimile of the first edition of 1593 is finely bound together with facsimiles of the first editions of Lucrece (1594), The Passionate Pilgrim (1599), and the Sonnets (1609).The facsimiles are taken from copies held at the Bodleian Library and the Christie Miller Library at Britwell. For each of the four works, Lee (1859-1926) provided a bibliography and "a full and learned introduction incorporating a detailed account of its publication history and a descriptive census of copies, as well as a full survey of literary sources and analogues" (ODNB).Such bindings are named in honour of the famous Regency miniaturist Richard Cosway. They were initially executed in the first decade of the 20th century by Rivière & Son for Henry Sotheran, with the miniatures by Carolin Billin Currie. The Bayntun bindery, which acquired Rivière in 1939, continued to bind books in this style until the late 20th century.

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