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271 272 WORDSWORTH’S AUTHORITATIVE ACCOUNT OF GREECE
271.WORDSWORTH, Christopher. Greece: Pictorial, Descriptive and Historical. London: W.L. Graves and Co. for William S. Orr and Co., 1839-[1840].
£495
8vo in 4s (242 x 158mm). Contemporary half maroon hard-grain morocco over marbled boards, tooled in gilt and blind, spine gilt in compartments, lettered in one, others decorated in gilt and blind, marbled endpapers, all edges marbled; pp. xxvii, [1 (blank)], 356; steel-engraved frontispiece by R. Brandard after F. Hervé, retaining printed tissue guard, steel-engraved additional title with vignette by E. Radclyffe after T. Creswick, 24 steel- engraved plates by E. and W. Radclyffe, Brandard, H. Adlard, et al. after W. Purser, Copley Fielding, Hervé, et al., all retaining printed tissue guards, 2 steel-engraved maps by and after John Dower, wood-engraved head- and tailpieces, and illustrations and maps in the text; lightly rubbed causing minimal losses at corners, scattered light spotting, a few ll. and plates with very light, near-imperceptible damp-marking at edges, and a few ll. and plates creased at corners, one flyleaf neatly excised, nonetheless a very good copy in a contemporary binding; provenance: J.F. Walker (20th-century booklabel on upper pastedown) — Revd John Walker (late 20th-century bookplate on front free endpaper).
First edition, this issue with captions printed on the tissue guards (copies are also known with the captions printed on the plates). Wordsworth (1807-1885) was the younger son of Christopher Wordsworth (1774-1846, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge and the younger brother of the poet William), and was educated at Winchester College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where ‘a host of college and university prizes followed. In 1830 he graduated senior classic in the classical tripos and fourteenth senior optime in the mathematical tripos; he won the first chancellor’s medal for classical studies and was immediately elected a fellow of Trinity and subsequently an assistant college tutor. His distinction in classical languages was such that he was later singled out to translate into Greek and Latin messages from the English episcopate to leaders of foreign churches. He began to travel in Italy and Greece and made his mark in the field of inscriptions and exploration: in 1832 he went to Paestum and to Pompeii, where he was the first to decipher the graffiti. In Sicily he developed an interest in Theocritus, the subject of later writing in 1844. During a prolonged visit to Greece and the Ionian Islands he made a conjecture as to the site of Dodona which was later corroborated. He was the first Englishman to be presented to King Otho’ (ODNB). Shortly after his return to England, Wordsworth was ordained as a priest (1835), and was appointed Public Orator in Cambridge in 1836 and (in the same year) Headmaster of Harrow School. 1836 also saw the publication of Wordsworth’s first book based on his visit to Greece, Athens and Attica: A Journal of a Residence There, a ‘very interesting and detailed description of the Attic peninsula’ (Blackmer 1839), which was reprinted in 1837 and then followed by the present work. Greece: Pictorial, Historical and Descriptive was issued in 12 parts (in 11) through the course of 1839, with a preface dated 27 November 1839. The first part (and possibly others) was reprinted, possibly due to the work’s popularity increasing as publication proceeded, and Blackmer identifies a second issue of part 1, with ‘Second Edition’ printed on the upper wrapper. It is possible that this copy was bound up from the original parts and the first part is the later issue, since the bibliography of ‘Works Illustrative of Greek Geography’ which prefaces the text includes the reading ‘being nconsistent with’ in its opening paragraph with a dropped letter ‘i’, which was correctly printed as ‘being inconsistent with’ in other copies of the 1839 edition (e.g. the London Library copy).
Blackmer 1840. 273
272. WORDSWORTH, William and Dorothy. Letters. Arranged and Edited by Ernest de Selincourt. Oxford at the Clarendon Press. 1935-39.
£198
8vo. 6 vols.; original maroon cloth, spines lettered in gilt; browning to some endpapers, otherwise a very good set.
Comprising: Early Letters (1787-1805) 1 vol.; The Middle Years (1806- 1820) 2 vols.; The Later Years (1821-1850) 3 vols.
273. WRIGHT, Walter Page. Alpine Flowers and Rock Gardens Illustrated in Colour [...] with Notes on “Alpine Plants at Home” by William Graveson. London: Headley Brothers, 1911.
£95
8vo (226 x 162mm). Original green cloth, upper board blocked with an Alpine landscape in colours and lettered in gilt, spine blocked in colours with a design of a flower and lettered in gilt, light brown endpapers; pp. 292; colour-printed mounted frontispiece, 35 colour-printed mounted plates, retaining tissue guards with printed captions, and 15 monochrome plates; extremities very lightly rubbed, scattered light spotting, one guard with a small hole, otherwise a very good copy, in a bright pictorial binding; provenance: Francis Treherne Thomas (1865-1932, early engraved armorial bookplate on upper pastedown).
First edition, third printing. W.P. Wright (1864-1940) was the son of the horticulturist John Wright VMH, FRHS, and was the author of a number of horticultural works including Roses and Rose Gardens (London: 1911), Hardy Perennials and Herbaceous Borders (London: 1912), and Garden Trees and Shrubs (London: 1913). Alpine Flowers and Rock Gardens describes the characteristics and habitats of Alpine plants, with advice on cultivating them in Britain, and gives detailed descriptions of and notes about the principal species. The first edition was issued in October 1910, and reprints of it appeared in January and May 1911, and the colour illustrations are taken from ‘nature studies by Nenke and Ostermaier, of Dresden’ (p. 292). A second edition, with new colour plates, was published in 1913.
FIRST ENGLISH EDITION OF A MOUNTAINEERING CLASSIC, LIMITED TO 300 COPIES
274. ZSIGMONDY, Emil. In the High Mountains … Translated by Olwyn Grimshaw. [S.l.]: Martins the Printers for The Ernest Press, 1992.
£95
8vo (253 x 188mm). Original red cloth by Hunter & Foulis, spine and upper board titled in gilt, design of ice-axe and ropes in silver and black on upper board, all edges gilt, dove-grey endpapers; pp. [2 (limitation leaf, verso blank)], xxviii, 378, [6 (blank)]; frontispiece, 16 plates after E.T. Compton, text illustrations after Zsigmondy et al.; a fine copy.
First English edition, no. 207 of 300 copies, of Zsigmondy’s Im Hochgebirge (1889), with a foreword by Keith Treacher. Zsigmondy’s outstanding climbs in the Alps and the Dolomites, as related in the present work, were among the finest of the age (many first ascents), and range through almost all regions of the Austrian Alps, to the Dolomites, the Valais, and the Dauphiné. Additional material includes the original review from the Alpine Journal and the account by Emil’s brother of the author’s fatal Meije accident in 1885 from the Oesterreichische Alpen-Zeitung.
Perret 4659 (noting this edition).
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