August 2020 Catalogue

F i n e N e w A c q u i s i t i o n s 40 “Give Me Liberty To Know, To Utter, To Argue Freely…” 38. MILTON, John. A Complete Collection of the Historical, Political, and Miscellaneous Works… Both English and Latin. With som [sic] Papers never before Publish’d. Amsterdam, 1698. Three volumes bound as one. Thick folio (8 by 12-1/2 inches), contemporary full speckled calf gilt rebacked with original spine laid down. $4000. Click for more info Expanded second edition of Milton’s collected prose works, published only one year after the first edition. This folio volume notably includes Milton’s finest prose works: Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce , Eikonoclastes , and his landmark Areopagitica , in which “the argument for freedom has never, before or since, been so magnificently or forcefully expressed” (PMM 133). Areopagitica , in particular, “was the first Milton book published in America (1774) and its arguments have continued to echo down the centuries in defense of liberal ideas of toleration and intellectual freedom” (Lewalski in Bloom, 322). This second edition includes the first edition of John Toland’s Life of Milton , published as a separate work the following year. Contemporary owner signature on title page. Text generally quite clean, title page of Volume III remargined. A handsome copy.