Spenser

1902 · 145313 — Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Company 1902. First edition thus first impression number 16 of 400 numbered copies from an edition limited to 419 copies designed by Bruce Rogers for the Riverside Press two years after his appointment as head of the Department of Special Bookmaking and a notably early publication featuring the involvement of this great book designer. This is an attractive edition of Spenser's famous marriage poems in a superb Riviere binding. Small folio 295 x 188 mm. Title vignette and two large illustrations printed in red mounted in the text. Finely bound by Riviere & Son in contemporary red crushed morocco titles in gilt direct to spine raised bands compartments finely tooled in gilt elegant double and triple gilt fillet frames to boards with ornate floral motifs to corners turn-ins richly gilt marbled endpapers top edge gilt others untrimmed. Housed in custom pink cloth slipcase corners a little bumped. Engraved pictorial bookplate of Pennsylvania historian and poetry collector Christopher Magee Steel 1900-7196 to front pastedown. Small splits to joints some with old expert repairs lower tip slightly bumped the binding otherwise sound and clean internally fresh and unmarked; an attractive copy. hardcover