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Details
GOWER, John (ca 1325-1408). De Confessione Amantis. Edited by Thomas Berthelet. London: Thomas Berthelet, 1532.
2o in sixes (302 x 191 mm). Title within woodcut border (McKerrow and Ferguson 26), several woodcut initials, woodcut tail-piece at foot of dedication to Henry VIII. (Title soiled at edges with lower corner chipped, some marginal soiling and occasional pale staining, heaviest at end, a few lower corners chipped, without final blank.) Brown half morocco, covers gilt-ruled, gilt-panelled spine, edges and turn-ins, by the Scroll Club; quarter morocco solander box. Provenance: annotations in several early hands -- unidentified 19th-century armorial bookplate on title verso --Robert Walsingham Martin (bookplate) sold Parke-Bernet, New York, 12 November 1963, lot 335 -- purchased from Seven Gables Bookshop, New York, 13 December 1972. Exhibited: Grolier Club, 'This powerfull rime,' 1975, no. 1.
Second edition. Gower's only English poem was written in eight-syllable rhymed lines between 1386-1390, and includes more than a hundred separate tales drawn from a wide range of classical and medieval sources. The first edition was edited and printed by William Caxton in 1483. But the second is regarded by Jackson as "textually an improvement over the earlier one. It is also a good example of workmanlike printing, much above the average English work of the period." The story of Pericles occurs in the eighth book under the name of "Apollonius of Tyre" (verso fol. 173ff.). It was drawn from the Gesta Romanorum and provided Shakespeare with the plot of Pericles (first printed in 1609), a play where Gower himself appears as a chorus. Bartlett 192; Hayward 4; Pforzheimer 421; STC 12143. A TALL COPY.
2o in sixes (302 x 191 mm). Title within woodcut border (McKerrow and Ferguson 26), several woodcut initials, woodcut tail-piece at foot of dedication to Henry VIII. (Title soiled at edges with lower corner chipped, some marginal soiling and occasional pale staining, heaviest at end, a few lower corners chipped, without final blank.) Brown half morocco, covers gilt-ruled, gilt-panelled spine, edges and turn-ins, by the Scroll Club; quarter morocco solander box. Provenance: annotations in several early hands -- unidentified 19th-century armorial bookplate on title verso --Robert Walsingham Martin (bookplate) sold Parke-Bernet, New York, 12 November 1963, lot 335 -- purchased from Seven Gables Bookshop, New York, 13 December 1972. Exhibited: Grolier Club, 'This powerfull rime,' 1975, no. 1.
Second edition. Gower's only English poem was written in eight-syllable rhymed lines between 1386-1390, and includes more than a hundred separate tales drawn from a wide range of classical and medieval sources. The first edition was edited and printed by William Caxton in 1483. But the second is regarded by Jackson as "textually an improvement over the earlier one. It is also a good example of workmanlike printing, much above the average English work of the period." The story of Pericles occurs in the eighth book under the name of "Apollonius of Tyre" (verso fol. 173ff.). It was drawn from the Gesta Romanorum and provided Shakespeare with the plot of Pericles (first printed in 1609), a play where Gower himself appears as a chorus. Bartlett 192; Hayward 4; Pforzheimer 421; STC 12143. A TALL COPY.