Faustus: His Life, Death, and Descent into Hell
London: W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 1825
First edition. Small octavo (overall 173 x 117 mm, the pages 168 x 110 mm). Engraved hand-colored frontispiece (“The Corporation Feast”). Early 20th century half brown morocco over gilt-ruled marbled boards by Zaehnsdorf (stamped on lower front free endpaper verso), spine in six compartments with raised bands, the second with gilt title, the others with gilt floral tool with onlays of red petals, matching marbled endpapers, top edges gilt, others uncut. Collates [2 ll.], 1 l. (half-title), 1 l. (frontispiece verso), 1 l. (title), pp. [v]-xii, 251, 1 p. (advertisements), [2 ll.], additional advertisement slip tabbed in after p. viii. Offsetting from frontispiece onto title, negligible browning on preliminaries, scattered tiny imperfections in the paper, otherwise fine.
This is a superb copy of the rare first edition of Borrow’s
first book, translating von Klinger’s Fausts Leben, Taten und
Höllenfahrt (St. Petersburg 1791), a sensational embodiment of
the Sturm und Drang of von Klinger’s formative years with
Goethe. With an exceptional gift of tongues and the encouragement of William
Taylor, the Norwich philologist and scholar of German romantic literature,
Borrow probably worked on the bulk of his translation before 1824, while
serving his five years’ articles with Norwich solicitors. His service
complete, he abandoned the law and plunged headlong into the cocoon of New
Grub Street, from which he would emerge as the remarkable writer-traveler
of The Bible in Spain. Faustus contains a full measure
of Borrow’s anti-bourgeois anti-establishmentarianism, nurtured early
by the radical nonconformist Taylor. Injudiciously transcribing a choice
derogation by von Klinger of German citizenry onto “the inhabitants
of an English town called Norwich, when dressed in their Sunday’s
best” (Faustus, p. 59), Borrow suffered the public burning
of his book by the chief library of the city, a shunning which help may
explain its scarcity.
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Price: $2,000
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