[Wotton, Thomas] -- Thucydides

Estimate

8,000 - 12,000 USD

bidding is closed

Description

[Wotton, Thomas] -- Thucydides
L'Histoire de Thucydide Athenien, de la guerre qui fut entre les Peloponesiens & Atheniens, translatée en langue Francoyse par feu Messire Claude de Seyssel lors Evesque de Marseille, et depuis Archeveque de Turin. Paris: Pierre Gaultier pour Jehan Barbé et Claude Garamont, 1545
Ink, paper and cow

16mo (4 1/2 x 3 in.; 115 x 75 mm). Ruled in red, Jehan Barbé's printer device on title-page, dedicatory poem by Clement Marot. Contemporary Parisian binding: brown calf, gilt fillet, lozenge-shape compartment with azured floreate ornament of quatrefoil design, in a gilt fillet compartment "THOMAE WOTTONI. ET (A)MICORUM" on upper cover (correctly spelled "AMICORUM" on rear cover) in gilt letters, gilt date "1550"; corners and raised bands rubbed, number "18" written in white paint on the top of the spine with a 20 mm tear, upper joints fragile, tiny wormhole on the last cover and at the bottom of the spine. In a blue morocco box.

Provenance

Thomas Wotton (gilt-tooled inscription on binding) — Purchased by Pantlin at Sotheby's London, December 18, 1936, lot 122 — Boies Penrose II (bookplate, not in his sale); acquisition: Bequest of John Fleming

Literature

USTC locates only one copy in public institutions in the United States (Michigan University Library, Z 232 G27 1545); Nixon, Twelves Books in Fine Bindings from the Library of J.W. Hely-Hutchinson, 1953, pp. 32-48; Needham, Twelve Centuries of Bookbindings, no. 53.

Catalogue Note

Thomas Wotton's copy.

Handsome italic printing of Claude de Seyssel's French translation of Thucydides, bound for Thomas Wotton, of Boughton Malherbe, Kent, who was known as "The English Grolier." He was the first Englishman to collect a planned library of gold-tooled bookbindings. About 140 volumes have survived from his library. As for the Thucydides, a large group of these bears the Grolier-like tooled inscription "Thomae wottoni et Amicorum."

According to Nixon, this binding is part of the "group IV. Simple bindings before 1553, type D": "Binding[s] [with] ownership inscription in the form THOMAE WOTTONI ET AMICORUM and the date 1550. In place of the medallions, this has a lozenge containing four impressions of a tool. …"