Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae, Venice, Aldus, 1514, contemporary English calf, Fletcher of Saltoun copy

Athenaeus Naucratita. Αθηναιου Δειπνοσοφιστου την πολυμαθεστατην πραγματειαν νυν εξεστι σοι... (Venice: Aldo Manuzio and Andrea Torresano, August 1514)

A very tall and crisp copy of the editio princeps in a contemporary English binding.

These dinner conversations, assembled by Athenaeus in the early third century, contain much information relating to food and wine and food etiquette, along with philosophy, literature and medicine. Aldus had planned an edition of this text back in 1498, of which a proof fragment survives; it was edited for Aldo by Marcus Musurus.

The binding has elements of both English and Netherlandish design; Oldham plate IV shows an almost identical binding which is English but of Netherlandish design. The pineapple stamp is a close match to Oldham, plate LVII, no. 972.

The lower pastedown also contains a few annotations in Greek in two different hands.

Super-Chancery folio (326 x 210 mm). Greek type, 54 lines plus two headlines. collation: A-B¹⁰ a-s⁸ t⁴ (B10 blank): 168 leaves. Woodcut Aldine device on title-page and final verso.

binding: Contemporary English (or Netherlandish?) blind-stamped calf over pasteboard (337 x 218 mm), covered tooled with blind fillets in a diaper pattern filled with pineapple, owl, flower and bird (phoenix?) stamps, pastedowns of incomplete bifolia from an English fourteenth-century manuscript (containing Nicholas of Lyra's gloss on the Gospel of John), stubs from two pairs of ties. (Rebacked to style, edges rubbed, corners repaired.)

provenance: Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun (1655-1716), his signature on lower pastedown, and according to his catalogue (National Library of Scotland, Saltoun Papers, MS 17863), "sent with Cuningham to England" (i.e. from the Netherlands, where Alexander Cunningham sourced books for Fletcher) — Sotheby's, sale, 17-18 December 1956, lot 311, £17, to Bernard Quaritch. acquisition: Purchased from Hamill & Barker, Chicago, 1969. references: UCLA 123A; Edit16 3440; Renouard 67/4