MASTERPIECES OF WESTERN LITERATURE—HOMER, VIRGIL, DANTE AND GOETHE—MASTERFULLY ILLUSTRATED AND BOUND
HOMER. The Iliad and The Odyssey. Translated into Blank Verse by William Cullen Bryant. Eight volumes. WITH: VIRGIL. The Aeneid. Translated into English Verse by Christopher Pearse Cranch. Two volumes. WITH: DANTE. The Divine Comedy. Translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Six volumes. WITH: GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust, A Tragedy. Translated by Bayard Taylor. Four volumes. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1905-6. Together, twenty volumes. Quarto, original full black morocco, elaborately gilt-decorated spines and boards, raised bands, marbled endpapers, top edges gilt, uncut. $9500.
Magnificent large-paper limited edition of these cornerstones in the Western canon, number 34 of only 600 copies of the Iliad and Odyssey and 34 of 650 copies each of the Aeneid, the Divine Comedy and Faust, generously and splendidly illustrated with a frontispiece in double-suite (hand-colored and proof state) in each volume and 144 engraved plates, handsomely bound at the Riverside Press.
From the fall of Troy to the fall of Doctor Faust, from Odysseus' trek across the seas to Dante's descent into Hell and ascent into Heaven, these magnificent volumes present milestone translations of five foundational texts of Western literature: The Iliad and Odyssey of Homer (translated by William Cullen Bryant), the Aenid of Virgil (translated by Christopher Pearse Cranch), Dante's Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) and Goethe's Faust (translated by Bayard Taylor). Bryant's translation of Homer (1870-71) is especially esteemed, and Longfellow's rendering of The Divine Comedy (1865, 1867) "first revealed Dante to numberless readers, and is still considered one of the great versions" (DAB VI:386). Cranch's translation of Virgil dates from 1872; Taylor's translation of Goethe, 1870. Beautifully bound and illustrated with double-suite (proof state and hand-colored) frontispiece reproductions of paintings by Rembrandt, Burne-Jones, Alma Tadema and others, and full-page engraved plates by John Flaxman and others throughout.
A beautiful set in fine condition.