EXTRA-ILLUSTRATED ALDINE EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS, EXQUISITELY BOUND

SHAKESPEARE, William. The Poetical Works. New York and London: (Chiswick Press), circa 1892. 12mo, contemporary full crimson morocco, elaborately gilt-decorated spines and covers with floral designs incorporating blue, green and white morocco inlays, green morocco-gilt doublures with red morocco inlays in a floral design, raised bands, watered silk endpapers, all edges gilt. $3800.

Later Aldine edition of the Bard's poems, with portrait of the poet and extra-illustrated with five window-mounted engravings, two hand-colored, splendidly bound in full morocco-gilt with multi-colored morocco inlays in floral designs.

This beautiful volume includes Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece and the Sonnets: "They abound in meditations on estrangement, failure and death. They bewail the poet’s outcast state, death's dateless night, the anxieties of separation, time's giving and taking away, even world-weariness. The conclusion, however, is triumphant—an uncompromising affirmation of the transcendence of love" (Baugh et al., 482). Includes Alexander Dyce's life of Shakespeare. The "Aldine" edition of British poets, first brought out by the publisher William Pickering beginning in 1830, aimed to introduce scholarly editions of the classics in a smaller, more affordable format.

A splendidly bound, extra-illustrated volume in fine condition.