Sixty Rare Books & Manuscripts Peter Harrington london We are exhibiting at these fairs: 1–2 October pasadena Antiquarian Book, Print, Photo and Paper Fair Pasadena Convention Center 8–9 October seattle Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair Seattle Center Exhibition Hall www.seattlebookfair.com 20–22 October london INK LDN 2 Temple Place, London WC2R 3BD inkfair.london 28–30 October boston Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair (ABAA) Hynes Convention Center, Boston www.bostonbookfair.com 4–5 November All items from this catalogue are on display at Fulham Road chelsea Chelsea Antiquarian Book Fair (ABA) Old Chelsea Town Hall Kings Road, Chelsea, London www.chelseabookfair.com 18–20 November hong kong China in Print Hong Kong Maritime Museum Central Ferry Pier No.8, Man Kwong St www.chinainprint.com VAT no. gb 701 5578 50 Peter Harrington Limited. Registered office: WSM Services Limited, Connect House, Cover illustrations from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The workes, 1532, item 2. 133–137 Alexandra Road, Wimbledon, London SW19 7JY. Design: Nigel Bents; Photography Ruth Segarra. Registered in England and Wales No: 3609982 Peter Harrington london catalogue 124 Sixty Rare Books & Manuscripts All items from this catalogue are on display at Fulham Road chelsea mayfair Peter Harrington Peter Harrington 100 Fulham Road 43 Dover Street London sw3 6hs London w1s 4ff uk 020 7591 0220 uk 020 3763 3220 eu 00 44 20 7591 0220 eu 00 44 20 3763 3220 usa 011 44 20 7591 0220 usa 011 44 20 3763 3220 Dover St opening hours: 10am–7pm Monday–Friday; 10am–6pm Saturday www.peterharrington.co.uk All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk The most extensively illustrated book of the 15th century 1 SCHEDEL, Hartmann. Liber chronicarum. Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 12 July 1493 Imperial folio (444 × 310 mm), 325 leaves (of 326; without final blank). Contemporary German dyed-brown pigskin blind-tooled in a panel design with three frames filled with floral and scrollwork roll-tools, central panel with floral stamps; edges sprinkled blue, neatly mounted on later boards. Housed in a brown quarter morocco solander box by the Chelsea Bindery. 63 lines plus headline, Gothic letter, xylographic title-page, 645 woodcut illustrations by Pleydenwurff and Wohlgemuth repeated to a total of 1,809, some full-page, others double-page, includ- ing a double-page map of the world and double-page map of Europe. With the inscription on title of Johan Divel dated 1547 recording its gift from the estate of Herwart ? of the canons of St Blasius in Brunschweig; small library stamp with crown and phrase “Karl ProPr” on title; post- humous bookplate of noted American bibliophile Robert S. Pirie laid in. Some contemporary sidenotes or captions identifying cities. Later spine worn, head and foot of spine chipped, corners mended; clean marginal tears mended in leaves 12, 56, & 291, small marginal smudges and spots, light browning within text block in leaves 172–182, 217, 250, dampstain in lower outer corner of last 16 leaves, a few tiny mends at lower edge of last leaf; overall, a very good copy. first edition of the nuremberg chronicle, the most extensively illustrated book of the 15th century, a universally acknowledged masterpiece of complex design. Compiled by the Nuremberg doctor, humanist and bibliophile Hartmann Schedel (1440–1514), the text is a year-by-year account of no- table events in world history from the Creation to the year of dieval history, and a large series of city views (including Augs- publication, including the invention of printing at Mainz, the burg, Bamberg, Basel, Cologne, Nuremberg, Rome, Ulm and exploration of the Atlantic and of Africa, as well as references Vienna), as well as a double-page map of Europe including to the game of chess and to medical curiosities, including what Ireland and Britain, Iceland and Scandinavia, and a Ptolemaic is believed to be the first depiction of Siamese twins. world map apparently sourced from the frontispiece of Pom- The book is especially famed for its series of over 1,800 ponius Mela’s Cosmographia (Venice, Ratdolt, 1488). woodcuts depicting subjects from biblical, classical, and me- 2 Peter Harrington 124 The work was carefully planned, with manuscript Examplar the Nuremberg Chronicle (1976), approves Dr Peter Zahn’s count of volumes being made for both the Latin and the German text probably 1,500 Latin copies printed. version that followed closely afterwards: the sketches in these HC 14508*; BMC II 437; Klebs 889.1; Polain(B) 3469; Goff S307. confirm the active involvement in the project of the young Al- brecht Dürer, then just completing his apprenticeship in Pley- £87,500 [108472] denwurff and Wohlgemuth’s workshop. Wilson, The Making of 3 All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk The first complete collected edition of Chaucer, the first with paper restoration at upper outer corner and loss of part of the foliation number and just touching one letter of the colophon, a very collected volume of any English author good copy. 2 first complete collected edition of Chaucer and the CHAUCER, Geoffrey. [The workes of Geffrey Chaucer, first attempt to collect into a single volume the complete writ- newlie printed, with dyvers workes whiche were never in ings of an English author. The Canterbury Tales alone had been first printed by Caxton, first without and then with woodcuts, print before: as in the table more playnly dothe appere.] before Pynson attempted something like a collected edition in London: by Thomas Godfray, 1532 three separate publications of c.1526, but Godfray’s publication Folio (312 × 213 mm). Contemporary blind-tooled calf lifted from the “was the first attempt at a critical edition and for over 200 years original binding and relaid on heavy boards and rebacked to style (a provided the standard text of The Canterbury Tales” (Hayward). pencilled note dates the restoration 1946), the sides panelled with a Only The Canterbury Tales is illustrated: the cuts of the Knight stylised wheatsheaf roll and a decorative roll incorporating heads, the fore edges showing the marks where clasps and catches were formerly and Squire are copies from Pynson’s 1526 edition (Hodnett attached. 394 (of 397) leaves (lacking A1–3, supplied in good quality 2066, 2067), while the remaining 13 were cut for Caxton’s 1483 facsimile). Black letter, text in double columns. 20 woodcut illustra- edition (Hodnett 214–236). tions from 15 blocks, section-titles within woodcut compartments The editor was William Thynne, clerk of the kitchen and of (McKerrow & Ferguson 19) for The Romaunt of the Rose, Troylus and Cre- the green cloth to Henry VIII, and recipient of numerous grants seyde, Boetius de consolatione philosophie, “How Pite is Ded and Beried in and appointments. Thynne provides the first printed editions a Gentyll Hert” and “The Testament of Love,” all with continuous fo- of a number of Chaucer’s major works in verse and prose, in- liation and signatures, QQ3 cancelled as usual and replaced by four cluding The Book of the Duchess, The Legend of Good Women, Boece, leaves incorporating Robert Henryson’s Testament of Criseyde. Early and The Treatise on the Astrolabe. He also printed a large number ownership inscriptions of John Rappe in French, one in The Romaunt of the Rose (foot of sig. 2E3v) dated 8 June 1583; early ownership inscrip- of works not by Chaucer, including poems by John Lydgate, tions of Ro: Tirell (=Tyrell) at head of The Canterbury Tales part-title and Thomas Hoccleve, Richard Roos, and Robert Henryson, giv- again at head of The Knight’s Tale, and of Thomas Lanham at foot ing the volume an additional if accidental value as a poetical of Troylus and Creseyde part-title; some early underlines and contem- miscellany. The introductory materials to the edition, which porary marginalia throughout; front free endpaper with pencilled include the first life of Chaucer and a genealogy, are prefaced note (in the hand of Lord Kenyon?) stating that the book was bought by an unsigned dedication to Henry VIII by Sir Brian Tuke, the at the sale of Captain Walter Tyrell’s books, Christie’s 1891; modern king’s secretary, arguing for the poet’s pivotal role in the devel- bookplate of Robert S. Pirie. A few minor marks or stains, last leaf opment of the English language. 4 Peter Harrington 124 The publisher Thomas Godfray was associated with some six leaves (A1, A4, Uuu1, Uuu2, Uuu5 & Uuu6) and the lower of the more radical propagandists of the Tudor revolution and outer portion of Ttt4, sold at Sotheby’s, 10 July 2003, lot 76. Thynne’s edition began a gradual process in the 16th century by Grolier, Langland to Wither 28; Hayward 2; Pforzheimer 173; STC 5068. which Chaucer was established both as the father of English po- etry and claimed for the nation as a proto-Reformer, so that John £150,000 [108308] Foxe the martyrologist would eventually acclaim him as “a right Wycliffian”. In its care and attention lavished on primarily secu- lar literature, it also provided the model for the folio editions of the Jacobean dramatists. Though Morris used Skeat’s Victorian edition as his copy text, his own copy of the 1532 Thynne folio surely supplied inspiration for the Kelmscott Chaucer. This is much the most complete copy to have appeared in commerce in the past 40 years. The only other substantially complete copy in that period was the William Morris–Richard Bennett–Michael Tompkinson–Albert May Todd copy, lacking 5 All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk Music and the theory of sound – Vincenzo’s Dialogo and Spine with short splits over the cords, top corners worn, missing the original ties.