[VERGILIUS MARO, Publius] PALMER, Samuel
An English Version of the Eclogues of Virgil
With illustrations by the author.
London: Seeley & Company, 1884.
Second edition, 1884. The large paper edition (limited to 135 copies) of 1883 was followed by a "first" edition of 1883 on smaller paper, otherwise identical to this "second" edition (or second issue). Tall quarto (9 x 13 in.). Quarter dark green leather with blind rolls, gilt lettering on spine, over original green cloth covers with gilt decoration by Samuel Palmer on front, top edges trimmed, others untrimmed deckle. Collates 160 pp: xvi, 1-102, [2], 14 ff. plates, 12 ff. and 2 pp. facing verses (each plate-and-verse pair counted as one numbered page). Slight rubbing of cloth edges and browning of deckle paper edges, book block strong and sound, internally fine and complete, unobtrusive water stain in upper center blank margins of pp. 79-93, the handmade thick wove text paper otherwise generally unblemished, overall a very good copy in an attractive restoration of the original binding. 14 plates printed on rectos only of fine laid paper with two or three lines of engraved verse in lower margin of plate (each with accompanying facing verses generally printed on verso only), comprising five original etchings, one said to be completed by Samuel Palmer (but two signed by him in the plate) and the other four by his son Albert Herbert Palmer, and nine facsimiles (eight photo-engravings and one reproduction of a watercolor).
To accompany his painstaking labor-of-love translation of Virgil, and encouraged by P.G. Hamerton, Palmer began the illustrations in 1872, but it was not until 1880, before his death the following year, that he again focused on the effort. His cataloguers state that he finished only one plate (although he signed two, including "The Nymphs their Daphnis," following page 54), leaving the other four etchings to be finished by Herbert. (Palmer completed only 13 catalogued etchings in total during his lifetime.) Notwithstanding the position of the cataloguers, Herbert Palmer states in his preface that his contribution towards finishing the plates was negligible (and indeed that his father completed two, including one of the unsigned plates); any details that he did add, he said were according to his father's instructions.
"Opening the Fold" (Lister 13; here following page 75) is the
signed etching which all cataloguers give wholly to Samuel Palmer. Lister
states (Etchings, p. 88, quoting Victoria and Albert Museum, Catalogue
of an Exhibition of Drawings, Etchings and Woodcuts by Samuel Palmer and
other Disciples of William Blake, 1926): "To Hamerton, 'Opening
the Fold' was 'the most completely beautiful of all Samuel Palmer's etchings….
It is full of air and space, the eye wanders over it for miles, and yet
at the same time there is a sweet solemnity to it…. The plate is the
perfect consummation of Palmer's experience, knowledge, and manual power.'"
While earlier states and proofs were known, it is notable that both Lister
and Hardie chose the present published state (with the two engraved lines
of verse) for their respective illustrations of the plate.
The Artist and the Book, 218; Lister, Raymond, Samuel Palmer
and His Etchings (1969), nos. 13-17, each ii/iv (illustrated as plates
13-17, each ii/iv from the 1884 edition); ______, Catalogue Raisonné
of the Works of Samuel Palmer (1988), B9 and pp. 229-237; Hardie, Martin,
"The Etched Work of Samuel Palmer," The Print Collector's
Quarterly, April, 1913, pp. 207-240 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).
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