DANTE'S DIVINE COMEDY IN TWO FINE LEATHER-BOUND FOLIO VOLUMES
[ALIGHIERI, DANTE]. The Vision of Hell. Translated by the Rev. Henry Francis Cary and Illustrated with the [Seventy-Five] Designs by Gustave Dore. With Critical and Explanatory Notes, Life of Dante, and Chronology. London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, n.d., [c.1880].
Together with:
[ALIGHIERI, DANTE]. The Vision of Purgatory and Paradise. Translated by the Rev. Henry Francis Cary and Illustrated with the [Sixty] Designs by Gustave Dore. With Critical and Explanatory Notes. London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, n.d., [c.1880].
Hardcovers. New editions. Full leather. Folios (390 x 300 mm.), pp. [xxiv], 183; [xii], 337. Illustrated with 135 plates outside the pagination. English text. Exquisite contemporary full morocco leather bindings, unsigned but clearly produced by a premiere bindery; spines with five raised bands, frames in blind to beveled boards, gilt inner dentelles, all page edges gilt, marbled pastedowns and endpapers, portrait frontispiece with tissue-guard. Title-pages printed in red and black. Illustrated with at total of one hundred and thirty-five designs by the renowned Gustave Dore, each plate with a captioned tissue-guard. Extensive footnotes. Contents: Vol. I: Preface; Life of Dante; The Vision of Hell, Canto I - XXXIV; Vol. II: Purgatory, Canto I-XXXIII, Paradise, Canto I-XXXIII. Condition: NEAR FINE. Bindings tight and secure with the hinges perfectly intact and the cover beautifully preserved. The contents largely fresh and clean. Beautifully inscribed by Charles Sell to front endpapers. A most exquisite large format set.
Notes: A New Edition and a spectacular large format set beautifully bound in full black morocco leather of the period. Dore's spectacular illustrations bring Dante's visions to life in a style and manner to satisfy artistic appetites both subtle and grotesque. An excellent example of the nineteenth century art of printing and decoration. Dr. Cary's was the first and most important translation into English. Cary's famous translation has long been considered the first modern rendering of Dante's timeless epic into English. While previous English translations prior to Cary's had been accomplished in the 18th century, none were able to transfer into the English language, the beauty and richness of language for which Dante has forever been revered.
