The Faerie Queene - photo 1
The Faerie Queene - photo 2

The Faerie Queene

Lot 17
06.10.2022 12:00UTC -05:00
Classic
Sold
$ 18 900
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUSA, New York
Archive
The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 813666
Lot 17 | The Faerie Queene
Estimate value
$ 10 000 – 15 000
The Faerie Queene

Edmund Spenser, 1590 and 1596

SPENSER, Edmund (c.1552-1599). The Faerie Queene. Disposed into twelve books, fashioning XII. Morall Vertues. London: [John Wolf] for William Ponsonbie, 1590. –. The Second Part of the Faerie Queene, containing the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Bookes. London: [Richard Field] for William Ponsonby, 1596.



The first edition of both parts of Spenser's great Tudor epic, Bates copy. The Faerie Queene, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth and written in a new poetic form now known as the Spenserian stanza, is a sprawling and surreal allegorical poem populated by robot squires, lady knights, evil sorceresses, and sundry figures from both Classical mythology and English legend. Spenser's new poetic form, appropriate for a poem which combines the Italian and British cultural imaginations, is a hybrid adaptation of Scots rhyme royal and Italian ottava rima, consisting of eight lines of pentameter and a final alexandrine. In this copy, volume one is bound as first issued, ending with the original final gathering Pp, which contains sonnets (but scandalously omitting one to Lord Burghley) and the errata. The cancellans gathering Gg is bound at the end of volume two—likely supplied by the binder, Riviere—after a new blank. The Welsh words in lines 4 and 5 of p. 332 are not printed, spaces having been left for them to be filled in by hand should any person actually able to spell the Welsh language be found. Pforzheimer 969 and 970; STC S123180 and S117748; Grolier Langland to Wither 231 and 233.



Two volumes, quarto (193 x 140mm). Woodcut devices on titles in both vols, full-page woodcut of Saint George, woodcut initials and typographic ornaments (title page of vol 1 lacking and replaced by expert facsimile, A2 soiled, gatherings at ends with a few repairs; last gathering extended at inner margin; title page of vol 2 restored, cancellans gathering with repairs touching printed area). Later red morocco gilt by Riviere for Pickering, boards gilt, edges gilt (joints a bit worn). Provenance: a few erased early inscriptions – James Hale Bates, 1826-1901 (bookplate).

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