•  Contemporary vellum over paste boards; spine with inked author and paper shelf labels: soiled with a few spots. Front hinge (inside) partially open, but sewing holding. Pages generally clean, with a few small dog ears. Inked ownership inscriptions on front endpapers and title-page; a few instances of underlining.

•  Old calf, rebacked and recornered; abraded with some loss on edges. Some waterstaining and browning; soiling and shallow chipping. Lacking final [62] ff., the index (only).

The book is illustrated with 100 engraved plates and numerous in-text engravings, as well as a frontispiece map of the Holy Land in each volume. The plates are mostly figural illustrations taken from paintings in catacombs and on sarcophagi, illuminated manuscripts, mosaics, ivory figurines, murals, etc. The title-pages are printed in black and red ink, and decorated with an engraved vignette.

•  Publisher's red cloth, stamped in gilt on the spines and front covers. Spines sunned and front cover of vol. II slightly sunned along fore-edge also; cloth of spines frayed at extremities and chipped in other places. Hinges (inside) of vol. I a little weak, stitching exposed; corners bumped with cloth damage; pages very shallowly bumped. Ex-library, with shelf labels on spines, institutional bookplates on front pastedowns, pressure-stamp to title-pages and one other page in each volume. Paper very good; pages clean and bright.  (24688)

The title-page here has a most striking xylographic printer's device depicting a man looking up at the moon. The work is also decorated with a number of handsome, rather unusual woodcut historiated initials and headpieces. The text is in italic and roman with sidenotes.

Provenance: “D.M. Armstrong / Venice 1872.”

•  Not in Adams. Limp vellum with indications of lost ties; soiled, stained, and cockled with some holing (a natural hole in the vellum of the rear cover is repaired by sewing). Front fly-leaves with some holing and chipping, partially repaired with paper. Pages lightly waterstained and cockled with some shallow dog-earing, a little shallow tattering, and some browning and soiling, usually on the edges. Inked ownership inscription on front fly-leaf.

Harold Lamb wrote the introduction. Of the author's attention to the minutiae of daily life in the Rome of A.D. 63–66 he writes, “The city itself appears in exact historical detail. Praetorians idling at their posts pass the time with their favorite dice games; girl attendants at Petronius' bath finish their duties punctiliously and break away to their own diversions as soon as the door curtain falls behind the master. Sienkiewicz knows how the dishes, including blackbirds, were prepared for a nobleman's feast; he knows what the oriental dancers wore on their heads and what the priests of Cybele carried in their hands, and what you see when you round a corner of the Vicus Sceleratus.”

Salvatore Fiume created the 35 drawings which were reproduced in three-tone process and mounted by hand. Giovanni Madersteig designed this edition, which is limited to 1500 copies, choosing a monotype Old Face font; the composition and printing of the text and illustrations was done by Madersteing at the Officina Bodoni in Verona.

The binding is full natural linen printed, in grey-blue, with an overall pattern derived from an old wood engraving. The signatures of Salvatore Fiume and Giovanni Madersteig appear on the colophon.

•  Limited Editions Club, Bibliography of the Fine Books Published by The Limited Editions Club, 1929–1985, 302.   In the original slipcase, spine sunned with a long closed crack to paper and paper cracked/chipped; case good overall. Book with spine lightly faded and rear pastedown with small gold bookseller's label; volume in the original dust jacket (spine sunned to darker than sides are); near fine.  (22293)

This is this history’s first edition and was followed by 1579, 1593, and 1628 editions. It is printed with a woodcut printer’s device on the title-page showing the goddess Liberty with two books labelled “Bononia docet” (“Bologna teaches”) at her feet. The text is enclosed in double-ruled borders and simply ornamented with a few woodcut initials, one of which shows Juno being pulled in her chariot by peacocks.

An epitome of the “antiquarian” both in form and content, this is a marvelous compendium of royal history and lore.

plague’s symptoms are poetically described in all their horrific agony

•  ESTC N11495; Foxon S663; NCBEL, II, 485. On Sprat, see: The Dictionary of National Biography, LIII, 419–23. Uncut copy. Removed from a nonce volume, with sewing mostly gone, now in a Mylar folder. Some age-toning and spotting ranging from mild to moderate.

Click the images for enlargements.

Provenance:  This copy has a laid-in typed letter from Paul Bennett (the typophile) describing having received his copy of this book from Van Courtright Walton (book and type designer) of the University of Texas Press, plus two slips “with the compliments of the University of Texas Press,” one signed by Frank Wardlaw and the other by Van Courtright Walton.

•  Publisher's cloth in original dust jacket, jacket slightly sunned with minor offsetting to interior from red spine label.  (24485)

The text is supplemented by 34 engraved folding plates and seemingly endless footnotes on the most minute points in the text. It begins with a handsome engraved title-page, and the main title printed in blacks and red. The text is unadorned but the footnotes occasionally contain engravings of coins or other matter. The 34 plates are totally devoted to numismatics—which is to say, most generally, portraiture.

•  Schweiger, II, 979; Dibdin, Greek and Latin Classics, 442–43. Publisher’s vellum, creamy white; tooled in blind with concentric frames on covers and large blind-stamped lozenge on each cover. Old pencilling on title-page. An attractive set of this impressive production.