Theocrite

1770 · 4654 — Oxonii Oxford: E Typographeo Clarendoniano 1770. 2 vols. 4to pp. iv lx ii 134 5 135-236 80; iv 388 4 389-412 4. Bound with: Curae Posteriores sive Appendicula notarum atque emendationum in Theocritum Oxonii nuperrime publicatum. Londini London: Apud Johannem Nourse 1772. 4to pp. iii-vii i 45 3. Slightly later diced Russia by J. Bohn boards bordered with a gilt rule spines divided by raised bands between gilt rules second third and fourth compartments gilt-lettered direct marbled edges and endpapers. Occasional toning and spotting a handful of leaves with a marginal stain from before binding. A little rubbing and scratches spine ends just a touch worn and vol. 1 joints cracking. Binder’s ticket to front pastedown pencil note signed ‘TLM’ to binder’s blank about a dozen marginal corrections and annotations in an early hand in vol. 2; from the library of the Gaisford family though without mark of ownership. A very nice copy of the famous Warton Theocritus reputed to be one of the most elegant editions ever published by Oxford University’s Clarendon Press. Thomas Warton 1728-1790 Oxford Professor of Poetry and later Poet Laureate wrote satirical verse but also maintained a talent for serious scholarship earning considerable respect for his efforts in this edition: ‘a very splendid edition. every lover of Greek literature is under great obligations to the very learned and ingenious Mr. Warton for this magnificant edition of Theocritus’ Harwood quot. in Dibdin. There are also contributions from the brilliant but difficult scholar Jonathan Toup 1713-1785. Together here with Warton’s edition is an appendix separately published two years later and hence rarely found though explicitly intended to accompany the main text. This copy is elegantly bound by Johann Bohn 1757-1843 German emigre bookbinder likely c. 1810 - Bohn established himself on Frith Street in 1795 and by the late 1810s had shifted focus to bookselling and the binding was plausibly done for Thomas Gaisford 1779-1855 who reached the position of Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford in 1811. Gaisford’s bookplate is absent but the copy was among books recently dispersed by a branch of descendants and Theocritus was an author Gaisford edited for his Poetae Minores Graeci 1814-1820. ESTC T103789 T103788; Dibdin II 488-492. E Typographeo Clarendoniano hardcover