MEDIEVAL PAGEANT.

(ROXBURGHE CLUB). WAGNER, ANTHONY, NICOLAS BARKER, and ANN PAYNE, Editors.

(London: [By Bernard Quaritch, Ltd.] for the Roxburghe Club, 1993). 470 x 356 mm. (18 1/2 x 14"). 5 p.l., xiii-xxi, [i], 100 pp., [1] leaf.

Tan quarter morocco over blue buckram boards, vellum tips, top edge and titling on spine in gilt. With 79, mostly full-page, illustrations (72 in color, one a three-page fold out). Front pastedown with bookplate of Frederick Baldwin Adams, Jr., and this copy originally prepared for Adams (his name printed in red in the Roxburghe list as a way of indicating this). In very fine condition.

This is a magnificently illustrated publication, with introduction, of facsimiles of "Writhe's Garter Book," made up of two once separate manuscripts of the late 15th century, both fine works of art. The first contains a series of illuminations depicting the sequence of ceremonies undergone by a knight joining the Order of the Bath (including a bath, a shave, prayers in chapel, and a banquet), while the second portrays generations of earls of Salisbury and their wives, the lords wearing elaborate suits of armor, the ladies garbed in heraldic cloaks. (ST9145r)

Price: $285.00