Details
WHITNEY, GEOFFREY. A Choice of Emblemes, and other Devises, For the moste parte gathered out of sundrie writers, Englished and Moralized. And divers newly devised. Leiden: in the house of Christopher Plantyn, by Francis Raphelengius 1586. 4to, 218 x 164 mm. (8 5/8 x 6 3/8 in.), early nineteenth-century English calf, covers with double gilt panel, spine gilt, upper cover detached, lower joint broken, lacking final blank leaf, a few small marginal repairs to title, repairs to lower inner margins of last 2 leaves, title slightly soiled, light browning to upper and fore-margins throughout, occasional light marginal foxing. FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST ENGLISH EMBLEM BOOK, 2 parts in one, publisher's woodcut device on title, typographical ornament title border, large woodcut arms of Robert, Earl of Leicester on verso of title, divisional title to part 2 with Leicester's woodcut crest, garter and motto, 247 woodcut emblems, printed one or two to a page, each within a typographical border, woodcut initials, typographical tail-piece ornaments.
Whitney's work was the first to present to an English audience an example of the large body of emblematic literature that had been published on the Continent; it is believed to have been the principal source of Shakespeare's knowledge of the sixteenth-century emblematists. Most of the woodcuts are copies of devices used in the works of Alciati, Faerni, Paradin, Sambucus and Junius. Their influence on the decorative arts in England was substantial, Whitney's Emblemes being used as a pattern-book for furniture motifs, wall and ceiling decorations, tapestry and embroidery. Grolier Langland to Wither 260; Hayward 21; Praz Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery II, p. 163; STC 25438.
Provenance: A few early annotations -- William Beckford, bequeathed to:Alexander Hamilton, tenth Duke of Hamilton (sale, Sotheby's London 1882-83), Beckford-Hamilton bookplate (affixed by Quaritch after the sale) -- William Loring Andrews, bookplate (sale, Anderson Galleries, 18 April 1921) -- Carl J. Ulmann, bookplate (sale, Parke-Bernet, 18 November 1952, lot 534).
Whitney's work was the first to present to an English audience an example of the large body of emblematic literature that had been published on the Continent; it is believed to have been the principal source of Shakespeare's knowledge of the sixteenth-century emblematists. Most of the woodcuts are copies of devices used in the works of Alciati, Faerni, Paradin, Sambucus and Junius. Their influence on the decorative arts in England was substantial, Whitney's Emblemes being used as a pattern-book for furniture motifs, wall and ceiling decorations, tapestry and embroidery. Grolier Langland to Wither 260; Hayward 21; Praz Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery II, p. 163; STC 25438.
Provenance: A few early annotations -- William Beckford, bequeathed to:Alexander Hamilton, tenth Duke of Hamilton (sale, Sotheby's London 1882-83), Beckford-Hamilton bookplate (affixed by Quaritch after the sale) -- William Loring Andrews, bookplate (sale, Anderson Galleries, 18 April 1921) -- Carl J. Ulmann, bookplate (sale, Parke-Bernet, 18 November 1952, lot 534).