Browse Similar Items
PROMETHEUS UNBOUND.
(London: C and J Ollier, 1820). 225 x 143 mm. (8 3/4 x 5 1/2"). 222, [2] pp. (including half title and final leaf of ads). FIRST EDITION, Second Issue (with "Miscellaneous" spelled correctly on the contents leaf).
PRETTY OLIVE GREEN CRUSHED MOROCCO, GILT, BY THE DOVES BINDERY (stamp-signed and dated 1895 on rear turn-in), covers ruled in gilt, corners with gilt lily and heart-shaped leaves on a stippled ground, raised bands, spine compartments with tulip sprig on a stippled ground, gilt lettering, gilt-ruled turn-ins with tulip and four leaves at corners, all edges gilt (joints renewed with outstanding skill). Granniss 54; Wise, pp. 55-56. For the binding: Tidcombe, "Doves Bindery" 187 (Pattern 354, book 720, tools 4d, E6, E7, and 3b). Rear board faded to two shades of brown (front cover with a hint of fading at two edges), upper margin with a hint of darkening right at edge, a dot of foxing here and there, but an extremely appealing copy nevertheless, clean and fresh internally, with excellent margins, and the very expertly restored binding lustrous and glittering with gilt.
This is a winning combination of a Shelley masterwork in a fine, early binding from the premier English Arts & Crafts bindery. According to Day, "Prometheus" and the important appended shorter poems here comprise "the poet's single greatest volume and most of the poetry upon which his popular reputation is based." It also happened to be Shelley's favorite of his own works. Inspired by Aeschylus' tragedy "Prometheus Bound" about the Titan punished by Zeus for giving humans fire, it is a "closet drama"--poetry written in the form of a play but not intended to be performed. Shelley uses this framework to express his belief in the free, creative spirit of man, writing to his publisher that the poem is "of a higher character than anything [he had] yet attempted" and he stated elsewhere that it was "the most perfect of [his] productions." Also contained in the volume are some of Shelley's most famous short poems, including "Ode to the West Wind," "Ode to Liberty," and "To a Skylark." Our elegant binding is the work of one of the most influential English bookbinders of the modern era. In 1882, Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson (1840-1922) was a 42-year-old lawyer longing to do creative work with his hands when the wife of his friend William Morris encouraged him to try bookbinding; after having bound books on his own for about nine years, he founded the Doves Bindery in March of 1893 because his worsening health prevented him from continuing to work with his own hands. Although Cobden-Sanderson did not hand-bind many books, his impact on bookbinding in England cannot be overstated. Tidcombe's detailed and exhaustive catalogue lists just 167 examples of bindings produced by him, but through this small corpus of work, he "rejuvenated English binding" with his theories of design "and set it on a new course of development." (Morgan Library Exhibition catalogue) He continued to design bindings after 1893, and established the Doves Bindery to execute them, hiring Charles McLeish from Riviere and Charles Wilkinson from Zaehnsdorf as finishers, Bessie Hooley (also from Riviere) as sewer, and Douglas Cockerell as apprentice. Our early production of the bindery strikes a happy medium between the very animated all-over tooling the bindery sometimes displayed in the 1890s and the more austere style that typified the workshop's 20th century bindings (the bindery continued in operation until 1922). The delicate stippling, gracefully tooled fillets, and simple but pretty flowers provide just the right amount of adornment for the lustrous leather. Although the joints of the volume have been renewed, the work is so well done as to defy certainty about its repair. (ST20970)
Price: $15,000.00