[APULEIUS; Adlington, William (trans.)]. The Golden Ass. London: Printed at the Chiswick Press for George Bell and Sons, MCMIV. [1904].
Hardcover. Limited edition [no. 129 of 220]. Full leather. Folio (350 x 220mm), pp. [10], 226, [1]. English text. Exquisite contemporary full morocco, unsigned but clearly produced by a premiere bindery, with intricate gilt ruled and tooled covers, edges and inner dentelles. Top edge gilt, other edges uneven. Marbled endpapers. Printed in red and black at the Chiswick Press on handmade paper, with rubricated chapter headings, woodcut initial letters, an ornate Art Nouveau frontispiece and title page by W.L. Bruckman. Side notes. Limitation page at front. Printer's device on final leaf - part of the Cheswick Library of Noble Writers. Provenance: James Patin's ex-libris bookplate to front pastedown.
Condition: FINE. An immaculate copy presented in the most exquisite binding.
Notes: a large format reissue of the 1566 first English language edition translated by Addington - limited edition no. 129 of 220 copies, 200 of which were for sale in Great Britain and 20 were for presentation. Lucius Apuleius Platonicus (c. AD 123/125-c. AD 180), an utterly Romanized Berber who described himself as "half-Numidian half-Gaetulian", is remembered most for his bawdy picaresque Latin novel the Metamorphoses, otherwise known as The Golden Ass or, in Latin, the Aureus Asinus (where the Latin word aureus - golden - connoted an element of blessed luckiness). The Metamorphoses is the only Latin novel that has survived in its entirety. It is an imaginative, irreverent, and amusing work that relates the ludicrous adventures of one Lucius, who experiments in magic and is accidentally turned into an ass. In this guise he hears and sees many unusual things, until escaping from his predicament in a rather unexpected way. Within this frame story are found multiple digressions, the longest among them being the well-known tale of Cupid and Psyche.
