Dryden's Virgil 1698 Folio with 102 woodcut illustrations

Description: The Works of Virgil: Containing his Pastorals, Georgics, and Aeneis. Translated into English Verse, by Mr. Dryden (London: Jacob Tonson, 1698). Second edition. Folio (330 x 220 mm), [3], 690. Full-page woodcut frontispiece and 101 full-page woodcut illustrations (complete). 18thcentury tan calf, spine divided into five compartments by raised and gilt-tooled double bands, gilt-tooling to compartments, head, and tail caps, lettered direct in gilt in second compartment, boards triple ruled in gilt with gilt-stamped Greek key device in outer rules, marbled endpapers. The second folio edition of Dryden’s translation of Virgil, following upon the first edition published in the previous year. In preparing Dryden’s monumental translation, adorned by copious woodcut illustration after the designs of many of the age’s most famous artists, including Wenceslas Hollar, Dryden and Tonson pioneered the subscription model, in which advance funding was secured from noble and aristocratic patrons, to whom each individual plate was dedicated. The subscription model of publishing would prove a popular way of subventing the cost of monumental publishing endeavours, including Pope’s translation of Homer in the 18th century, and David Roberts’ Holy Land in the 19th. The first edition was issued in two formats—‘large paper copies’, which were issued to the subscribers, and ‘small paper copies’, which were made available for general sale. Both the large and small paper copies were folio, and there is no difference in the layout or size of the text or plates. The second edition was issued only in small paper copies. While it has been estimated that the print run of the second edition might have been in the neighbourhood of 1000 copies, it is now rarer in the market than the 1st edition. Both editions are notorious for the uneven quality of paper, which often results in foxing and browning of the leaves, sometimes affecting a single page, sometimes a whole quire (the ongoing Nine Years’ War resulted in a 25% tax on imported paper in 1697, and many publishers, including Tonson, were forced to cut corners). The present copy has fared better than many: a handful of pages and plates show some foxing, but the vast majority are crisp, clean, and white.

Price: 2500 USD

Location: New York, New York

End Time: 2024-11-21T07:09:56.000Z

Shipping Cost: N/A USD