Painter, William

Estimate

15,000 - 25,000 USD

bidding is closed

Description

Painter, William
The Palace of Pleasure Beautified, adorned and well furnished, with Pleasant Histories and excellent Nouelles, selected out of diuers good and commendable authors. London: by John Kingston and Henry Denham, for Richard Tottell and William Iones, 1566
ink, paper, leather

4to (7 5/16 x 5 1/4 ins.; 186 x 143 mm). Black letter with woodcut initials, woodcut crest of the Earl of Warwick within typographical border on title with his arms on the verso; last two unsigned leaves, quire Nn and leaf Oo2 (the last is not present in any copies and likely a blank), repairs to title and following leaf, few headlines and folio numbers shaved but with ample lower and outer margins, E4, F1, 3B4 and 3N3 with loss to lower corners or outer margin not affecting text, ink library stamps to margins of two leaves. Contemporary limp vellum with new endpapers and labels; ties lacking.

Provenance

Sion College (inkstamp; Sotheby's London, 13 June 1977, lot 47, with the catalogue note: "the only other copy recorded in Britain is in the British Library")

Literature

STC 19121; ESTC S11079; Pforzheimer 783

Catalogue Note

First Edition of this important source book of Elizabethan drama.

The first translation into English of major works of Italian Renaissance literature, including stories from Boccaccio and Plutarch, the present work had an immense influence on early English literature. Some forty-three Elizabethan dramas including five Shakespeare plays derive their plots from these tales and those from the second volume published in 1567.

While ESTC lists ten copies in institutional collections (though many are imperfect), The Palace of Pleasure is almost impossible to obtain privately. The present copy is one of only two offered at auction in over half a century.