NONESUCH PRESS: DANTE ALIGHIERI.

£1,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

La Divina Commedia. First Nonesuch edition, number 1,280 of 1,475 copies only, from the library of Eva le Gallienne (1899-1991), the actor, director and translator, with her bookplate and small annotations. This finely bound and designed edition prints Dante's Italian parallel to Cary's English translation. It is illustrated after the Sandro Botticelli drawings that were used in the first Florentine edition of 1481.Rev. Henry Francis Cary's translation first appeared in 1814 and was praised by many, including by Coleridge during a lecture at the Royal Institution. The Italian text is from the philologist Mario Casella's authoritative edition of 1925, which contained numerous printer's errors that Casella corrected specially for this Nonesuch publication.Le Gallienne begun her career as an actor on Broadway. However, she grew dissatisfied with commercial theatre, and in 1926 she founded the nonprofit Civic Repertory Theatre, which "formed the philosophical bedrock for off-Broadway and the nonprofit resident theater movement" (ADNB). She was also instrumental in bringing European playwrights, such as Chekov and Ibsen, to American theatres, and she regularly produced and published her own translations. Later in life, she took on roles in film and television, for which she won an Emmy and was nominated for an Academy Award.

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