Dryden

1796 · 118718 — London: by T. Bensley for J. Edwards and E. & S. Harding 1796. First editions with these Bartolozzi engravings the only two works illustrated by Lady Diana Beauclerc here together in handsome contemporary full morocco. Dryden's adaptations of Chaucer and Boccaccio were among the chief reasons for his perhaps surprisingly high place in the esteem of the Romantic poets especially Coleridge Keats Byron and Scott while Bürger's Leonora inspired a frenzy of competing English versions around this time. Ironically Bürger had found his ballad form not in German literature but largely through the medium of Percy's Reliques; from Leonora it was reabsorbed into English through the Lyrical Ballads most directly Wordsworth's "The Idiot Boy". Two works bound in a single vol. folio 365 x 255 mm. Fables: 9 engraved plates 15 engraved vignettes; Leonora: engraved frontispiece 4 engraved plates 4 engraved vignettes most signed by Bartolozzi after Beauclerc. Leonora with parallel text German and English. Fine contemporary binding of green straight-grain morocco spine attractively gilt in compartments with interlocking wave tools gilt lettered in second panel sides with thick-and-thin rule enclosing a floral scroll border in gilt gilt inner dentelles pink endpapers gilt edges fore-edge gauffered. A little rubbing some offsetting and faint browning a most attractive pair. unknown