![LYLY, John (ca 1554-1606). Evphves. The Anatomy of Wit. Verie pleasant fir all Gentlemen to reade, and most necessary to remember. Wherin are contayned the delightes that wit followeth in his youth, by the pleasantness of love, and the happiness he reapeth in age, by the perfectnes of wisdome...Corrected and augmented. London: [Thomas East for] Gabriell Cawood [1579].](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2001/NYR/2001_NYR_09878_0080_000(033319).jpg?w=1)
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LYLY, John (ca 1554-1606). Evphves. The Anatomy of Wit. Verie pleasant fir all Gentlemen to reade, and most necessary to remember. Wherin are contayned the delightes that wit followeth in his youth, by the pleasantness of love, and the happiness he reapeth in age, by the perfectnes of wisdome...Corrected and augmented. London: [Thomas East for] Gabriell Cawood [1579].
4o (183 x 137 mm). Title-page with broad woodcut order, woodcut capitals, head- and tail-pieces. (Final blank lacking, title with several small marginal repairs, a few other tiny marginal repairs, last two leaves with a few letters retouched in headline.) 19th-century scarlet morocco, gilt-panelled covers, gilt spine, edges gilt, by F. Bedford. Provenance: Britwell Court Library (sold Sotheby's, London, 29 March 1971, lot 244) -- purchased from John F. Fleming, New York, 27 April 1971.
Probable Second Edition (first 1578; this being one of the two 1579 editions in STC). Title with a "P" preceding the imprint. Lyly made important contributions to the drama, including eight comedies produced between 1584 and 1594 and was for a brief period the lessee of the Blackfriars Theatre, but his exhuberantly etravagant prose romance, Euphues, an Elizbethan bestseller, was written while still an undergraduate at Oxford. One of Lyly's dedicatory letters is addressed to "my verie good friends the Gentlemen Scholars of Oxford"; in another, to "the Gentlemen Readers" (A4), the author observes that "he that commeth into print because he would be knowen, is like the foole that commeth into the Market because he would be seene" and comments wittily on the evanescence of literary fashion: "We commonly see the Booke that at Easter lyeth bound on the Stationers stall, at Christmass to be broken up in the Haberdashers shop [to wrap parcels]...I am content this Summer to have my doings read for a toie, that in Winter they may be ready for Trash. It is not strange when as the greatest wonder lasteth but nine dayes, that a new Worke, should not endure but three moneths. Gentlemen use bookes as Gentlewomen handle their flowers, who in the morning stick them in their heads, and at night strewe them at their heeles." In spite of Lyly's pessimistic assessment, Euphues itself proved immensely popular, and STC records at least a dozen editions before 1600, though most are represented by a very few copies and one edition (1580) by a single surviving exemplar. Bartlett 225; Grolier/English 10; STC 17053 (four copies, two imperfect, not including the present).
VERY RARE: no copy of any sixteenth-century edition has appeared at auction since this, the Britwell Court copy, in 1971.
4o (183 x 137 mm). Title-page with broad woodcut order, woodcut capitals, head- and tail-pieces. (Final blank lacking, title with several small marginal repairs, a few other tiny marginal repairs, last two leaves with a few letters retouched in headline.) 19th-century scarlet morocco, gilt-panelled covers, gilt spine, edges gilt, by F. Bedford. Provenance: Britwell Court Library (sold Sotheby's, London, 29 March 1971, lot 244) -- purchased from John F. Fleming, New York, 27 April 1971.
Probable Second Edition (first 1578; this being one of the two 1579 editions in STC). Title with a "P" preceding the imprint. Lyly made important contributions to the drama, including eight comedies produced between 1584 and 1594 and was for a brief period the lessee of the Blackfriars Theatre, but his exhuberantly etravagant prose romance, Euphues, an Elizbethan bestseller, was written while still an undergraduate at Oxford. One of Lyly's dedicatory letters is addressed to "my verie good friends the Gentlemen Scholars of Oxford"; in another, to "the Gentlemen Readers" (A4), the author observes that "he that commeth into print because he would be knowen, is like the foole that commeth into the Market because he would be seene" and comments wittily on the evanescence of literary fashion: "We commonly see the Booke that at Easter lyeth bound on the Stationers stall, at Christmass to be broken up in the Haberdashers shop [to wrap parcels]...I am content this Summer to have my doings read for a toie, that in Winter they may be ready for Trash. It is not strange when as the greatest wonder lasteth but nine dayes, that a new Worke, should not endure but three moneths. Gentlemen use bookes as Gentlewomen handle their flowers, who in the morning stick them in their heads, and at night strewe them at their heeles." In spite of Lyly's pessimistic assessment, Euphues itself proved immensely popular, and STC records at least a dozen editions before 1600, though most are represented by a very few copies and one edition (1580) by a single surviving exemplar. Bartlett 225; Grolier/English 10; STC 17053 (four copies, two imperfect, not including the present).
VERY RARE: no copy of any sixteenth-century edition has appeared at auction since this, the Britwell Court copy, in 1971.