DANTE ALIGHIERI.

£15,000 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

The Vision; or, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. First complete edition of Cary's translation, rare first issue, with uncancelled title pages. Often regarded as the best translation of Dante of the Romantic era, the privately printed work was produced in a diminutive format and type to help Cary reduce his costs. Initial sales were slow, but 1,000 copies sold in the months after Coleridge championed the translation in 1818.Reverend Henry Francis Cary (1772-1844) began translating the Divina Commedia into blank verse in January 1797 and initially published the Inferno by itself from 1805 to 1806. The complete translation was ready around 1813, but as he could not find a publisher, he brought out the work at his own expense in 1814. It was the first edition to adopt the well-known title The Vision. The work passed by largely unnoticed until Cary loaned Coleridge a copy upon their first meeting in 1817. Immediately enthusiastic, Coleridge praised the translation and raised its profile during his February 1818 lecture on European literature. Later that month, Ugo Foscolo of the Edinburgh Review remarked that Cary's translation was "'a great acquisition to the English reader', 'executed with a fidelity almost without example', and even opined that Dante would have used blank verse had he written in English" (Cunningham, p. 19). Its sudden critical success convinced the publisher Taylor and Hessey to purchase the unsold sheets from Cary and reissue them in 1818, with cancel title pag

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