A Beautifully Bound Set of the First Editions of Longfellow's Translation of Dante

Alighieri, Dante; Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth [Translator]

The Divine Comedy: [Comprised of] Inferno; Purgatorio; Paradiso

A Beautiful Set of a Landmark Edition of Dante's Divine Comedy. For two centuries, Protestant English-speakers shunned Dante for Milton's Paradise Lost. A combination of a fear of "Popery" and a national & ethnocentric bias led most English and American readers to treat the Catholic Florentine with ignorant disdain. As a Protestant and member of the faculty of Harvard, Longfellow's translation of the Comedia was revolutionary and, to some, verged on subversive. The translation was supported by the efforts of fellow Boston poets and intellectuals Oliver Wendell Holmes and James Russell Lowell.

Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1867. First American Edition [BAL 12146]. Beautifully Rebound in Full Green Morocco with Gilt Tooling Evocative of Original Cloth, Top Edge Gilt, Fore and Bottom Edges Uncut, Marbled Green Endpapers. A Very Good Set Complete in Three Volumes, Freshly Rebound. Text blocks are moderately toned at edges, . Several leaves show evidence of offsetting from laid-in material. A few trivial and scattered marks throughout. Bindings are tight and square. Hardcovers. Large Octavos. [xii], [1], 2-413pp; [x], [1]. 2-402pp; [x], [1], 2-452pp.

BAL 12146 conveys Ticknor & Fields claim that each volume had four printings. BAL expresses some trepidation in distinguishing between these printings and their sequence, notably for Purgatorio and Paradiso. The Inferno offered here is from the first printing [p. 223 note 116]; Purgatorio is from the first or second printing [p. 350 note 32]; Paradiso is "A" variant, with no sequence established. Very Good. Item #1618

Price: $5,000.00