Herodotus

[Graece & Latine] Historiarum lib[ri] IX ... Editio Secunda. [Geneva:] Henri Estienne, 1592

Folio (13 5/8 x 8 3/8 in.; 346 x 212 mm). Title printed in red and black with woodcut printer's device (Schreiber device 10), 4 large folding woodcut plates, ornamental initials and headpieces; some marginal soiling and occasional light spotting. Antique blind-tooled morocco with gilt rules, edges gilt, by the French Binders, Garden City, NY; some light wear to extremities.

"Eliz. Reg." (inscription in lower portion of title) — William Lancaster (1650-1707, Provost of Queen's College, Oxford) — George Cooper Abbs (BA Oxford 1790, ownership mark on title above and entering printer's device, the names of 3 other Abbs appear on a front endpaper) — Charles Conover Kalbfleisch (1868-1943, with his gilt-stamped red leather bookplate)

F. Schreiber, The Estiennes no. 222; Renouard 155, no. 3; on the Abbs family see D. Griffiths, A Catalogue of the Cooper Abbs Collection in the J.B. Morrell Library of the University of York (2000), pp. xi-xiv

some marginal soiling and occasional light spotting. Antique blind-tooled morocco with gilt rules, edges gilt, by the French Binders, Garden City, NY; some light wear to extremities.
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Second Estienne edition of Herodotus, joining the Valla Latin translation (first published in 1566) and the Greek text (first published in 1570) in parallel columns, correcting the Greek and revising the translation. The editor has also added marginal concordances to the 1570 edition in order to keep the references in his Greek Thesaurus useful.

The plates are plans of Babylon, the bridge of Babylon with Semiramis, the Suspended Gardens of Semiramis, and the Tower of Babel.

A beautiful copy with a fine 18th-century Oxford University provenance.