Property From The Collection of Robert S Pirie Volumes I & II: Books and Manuscripts

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Lot 400
  • 400

Gower, John

Estimate
5,000 - 7,000 USD
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Description

  • Gower, John
  • Confessione Amantis. London: Thomas Berthelette, the twelfth daie of Marche, 1554
  • Ink, paper, wood and cow
Folio (11 x 7 in.; 280 x 190 mm). Title within woodcut border (McKerrow & Ferguson 26), Gothic type, several woodcut initials, full-page manuscript page bound at the end of the volume; some dampstaining and spotting, title page probably supplied. Contemporary English (London) blind-stamped calf on wooden boards, with lozenge roll inside frame, supports of clasps (clasps missing); rebacked, endpapers renewed with seventeenth-century printed paper (probably an edition of Erasmus' Colloquia). Cloth slipcase. 

Provenance

Contemporary ownership inscription — Draycot House, Witts (Walter Long?; seventeenth-century ownership inscription on title) — Robert Walsingham Martin (bookplate). acquisition: Seven Gables, 1964

Literature

STC 12144; McKerrow & Ferguson 26; Oldham, plate XLVII, HM. a (7) 776

Catalogue Note

Third edition. One of the most important works of fourteenth-century English literature. The first edition was printed by Caxton in 1483. Berthelet published the second edition (in 1532) and the third edition.

A fine and large copy in contemporary blind-stamped calf.