Donne's Sermon of Valediction at His Going into Germany Preached at Lincoln's Inn April 18, 1619
London: The Nonesuch Press, 1932
First edition thus. Quarto (overall 29.6 x 18.2 cm, 11-5/8 x 7-3/8 in.).
No. 380 of 750 numbered copies, designed by Francis Meynell and printed
on fine soft Auvergne laid paper watermarked “Papier d’Auvergne
à la main” in the Fell types by John Johnson, Printer to the
University, at the University Press, Oxford. Stiff cream parchment paper
covers with black-lettered title on spine, front cover embossed in blind
with retrospective overall decoration of arabesque margins around ruled
panel of diaper pattern, yapp fore-edge, top edges rough trimmed, others
uncut. Collates [4 ll.], 1 l. (title), 1 l. (editor’s acknowledgement),
1 l. (contents), pp. 1-[80], 1 l. (colophon), [2 ll.]. Very good, with very
slight age-toning on spine and edges of covers, printer’s offsetting
and negligible foxing on endpapers and adjacent blanks, infrequent, overall
negligible browning on exposed extreme margins of text pages, the text pages
overall fine. The Sermon is here presented in a first printed redaction
of the Lothian and Ashmole MSS., closer to Donne in the pulpit than the
version known from the 1660 XXVI Sermons. With the engraved bookplate
of Kenneth Garth Huston (1926-1987), discerning collector of Geoffrey Keynes,
whose 1914 Bibliography of Donne made the case that a 1638 octavo
volume of “three pious and learned Treatises” collected by William
Milbourne included the first general printing of the Sermon. Dreyfus 86.
Price: $75
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