Rossetti, Christina | Two fine first editions

Property from the Workman Collection

Rossetti, Christina

The Prince’s Progress and Other Poems. London: Macmillan & Co., 1866

8vo (170 x 110 mm). Half-title, frontispiece and title illustrated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Original green cloth with decorative gilt motif to upper cover and spine, also designed by Rossetti, brown coated endpapers. Housed in custom clamshell case. [With:] New Poems. Hitherto Unpublished or Uncollected. London: Macmillan & Co., 1896. 8vo (175 x 112 mm). Frontispiece illustrated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Original navy cloth with decorative gilt motif designed by Dante Gabriel Rossetti to upper cover and spine; early ownership signature to front pastedown in pencil.

(Group lots not subject to return.)

Two first editions.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti had a distaste for the sometimes-gaudy aesthetic or ornamentation of Victorian books. In response to this, he designed his own bindings, which often demonstrated a combination of minimalist motifs and contemporary techniques. Here, the design of The Prince’s Progress & Other Poems in particular makes reference to clasps and nailheads on medieval books. Alongside the wood-engraved frontispieces and title-pages, the bindings play an important role not only in the overall art of the book, but its medieval allusion also reflect the themes of the narratives at hand, creating an organic symbiosis between the text and the physical object itself.