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FINE COPY OF BIBLIOPHILE EDITION IN 6 LANGUAGES
VIRGILIUS (VERGILIUS) MARO, Publius. Georgica ... Hexaglotta.
London, William Nicol, 1827. Small double folio (1mo)? (43 x 32 cm). A finely printed polyglot edition in a neo-classical style on large-margined wove paper, with the Latin, Spanish and German on the versos and the English, Italian and French on the facing rectos, with the general title-page and four part-titles for the four libri. Later nineteenth-century green goatskin morocco, gold-tooled boards, spine, board edges and turn-ins, double combed and waved marbled endpapers, headbands in green and white, gilt edges. With the engraved armorial bookplate of the dedicatee, William Howley (1766-1848), Archbishop of Canterbury.
| Orders and Information | € 2500 |
Magnificent deluxe edition, beautifully printed in an edition of 250 copies, of Virgil's Georgica in the original Latin and in verse translations into five modern languages, all six displayed together on each double-page spread to facilitate comparison. It is a fine example of English neo-classical design, with its pure, austere typography making frequent use of roman capitals for titles, headings, etc., and wholly without decoration. It is printed on heavy unwatermarked wove paper with no quire signatures, and is usually described as a folio or Imperial quarto, but we suspect each leaf is actually a whole small sheet (1mo). The book was instigated, funded and edited by the gentleman poet, playwright and translator, William Sotheby (1757-1883), friend of Coleridge, Scott and Wordsworth and satirized by Byron (and cousin of the family's first auctioneer, John Sotheby). Sotheby dedicated it to William Howley, Bishop of London and former Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, who was to become Archbishop of Canterbury the year after publication. While Sotheby's own literary works have not withstood the test of time, his translation of Virgil's Georgica, first published in 1800, is still highly regarded. For the Latin, he turned to Christian Gottlob Heyne's text, first published in 1767, but here probably following the revised edition of 1816. For the translations other than English, Sotheby enlisted Juan de Guzman for the Spanish, Johann Heinrich Voss for the German, Francisco Soave for the Italian and Jacques de Lille for the French.
In keeping with the austere neoclassical style (and the bibliophile rather than scholarly audience), there are no notes or introduction, and only eight leaves beyond those of the text itself: the half-title, title, dedication, a page naming the translators, and four part-titles (the colophon appears on the back of the last page of text). Sotheby entrusted the printing to William Nicol, who had taken over his father George Nicol's office in 1825. George Nicol, printing for the publisher William Bulmer, was the first in England to attempt to rival the famous bibliophile publications of Bodoni and the Didots, in 1791. His son William joined him as a partner in 1800, and carried on the fine printing tradition. William Martin (1762-1815), who cut the new types for the early Bulmer editions for Nicol, had trained under associates of John Baskerville and mixed Baskerville's style with influences from Didot and Bodoni, but his later work has not been well documented. The lighter capitals used for the words "Georgica Hexaglotta" on the title-page resemble his documented work, while the bolder capitals used for "Publii Virgilii Maronis" and the roman used for the main text discard Baskerville's influence and reflect England's leading role in the rapid evolution of type design at this date.
While the present copy bears the bookplate of the dedicatee, it bears no written inscription and may or may not have been presented to him at the time of publication. The binding is clearly later, perhaps ca. 1880, and the bookplate reflects Howley's appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1828, the year following publication. If Howley added the bookplate soon after publication, the binder carefully preserved it when he rebound the book. Slightly foxed throughout, serious only on the half-title and colophon, and otherwise in fine condition. The binding is slightly scuffed at the corners, but also generally fine. The margins are luxurious, ranging from 4.5 cm at the head to 10 cm at the fore-edge. A magnificent bibliophile edition of Virgil's Georgica, in six languages.
