"WORKS OF GREAT LEARNING AND RESEARCH": HANDSOME SET OF PLUTARCH’S LIVES IN EIGHT VOLUMES

PLUTARCH. The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romanes, Compared together by that grave learned Philosopher & Historiographer Plutarke of Chaeronea: Translated out of Greeke into French by James Amyot… and out of French into English by Thomas North. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1928. Eight volumes. Octavo, publisher's three-quarter maroon morocco gilt, red cloth boards, raised bands, top edges gilt, uncut. $2600.

Limited edition, number 50 of 500 sets printed on fine paper with wide margins, with eight frontispiece photogravures and eight additional photogravures, handsomely bound for the publisher at the Riverside Press.

"The Lives are works of great learning and research, and Plutarch is careful to quote his authorities, whose number indicates a formidable amount of reading… Early translated, by Amyot into French and by North into English, the influence of Plutarch's method has been constantly manifest in the biographies of the modern great and in the authors who have been inspired by it. Shakespeare relied almost exclusively on Plutarch for the historical background of ancient Rome" in his tragedies of Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus (PMM 48). Head- and tail-piece illustrations by Thomas Lowinsky. The first edition of North's translation, the first into English, was published in 1579. Bookplate in each volume.

A fine, handsome set.