The text is printed in roman and italic, ruled in red throughout, with sidenotes inset within the red ruled border. Anengraved portrait of Epicurus faces the title-page.

The translator, Walter Charleton (1620–1707), was named physician-in-ordinary to Charles I shortly after graduating from Oxford, and published numerous books on natural philosophy as well as physiology and antiquity. To the various writings by the philosopher Epicurus (341–270) included herein, Charleton added an Apology for Epicurus, building a Christian framework for the following chapters.

Provenance:  A later pencil inscription on the front free endpaper indicates this book may have once been in the library atDyrham Park, a 17th-century English mansion now overseen by the National Trust.

•  Wing (rev. ed.) E3156; ESTC R13827. On Charleton, see: ODNB online. On the binding, see: Nixon, English Restoration Bookbinding, no. 42.   Binding as above, with joints worn (especially at front joint's ends) and board corners scuffed, these gently refurbished; front hinge (inside) cracked but holding well; red leather spine label partially lost; frontispiece portrait excised and mounted on verso of front fly-leaf. A copy rather remarkably unspotted, with an inkstain in one outer margin and a brown chemical stain on another leaf, neither affecting text; while a shift in paper during printing resulted inan instructive typographical anomaly, with the text being printed at an angle on the lower outer corner of one page. A good book, a good binding, and a good copy.  (32483)

Click the image to the left
for an enlargement.

The third volume includes two plates and one oversized, folding plate reproducing two inscriptions and a frieze, engraved by E. Malpas.

Uncommon outside of Great Britain.

•  ESTC T113913; Brunet, I, 26; Lowndes, I, 5. Contemporary treed calf, spines gilt extra, with gilt-stamped leather title and volume labels; leather worn at edges and moderately rubbed with joints cracking. Front pastedowns with private bookplates and signs that a plate was removed on front free endpaper (one vol. endpaper holed); impressions of old pencilled shelf numbers on title-pages (and one lightly inked old date). First two leaves of vol. III with upper margins stained and final leaf browned; some pages with a few spots of faint foxing, most clean and crisp.

Provenance:  Front pastedown with 20th-century bookplate of Kenneth Rapoport (an American collector of early and scientific books).

Binding:  16th-century dark red morocco, unusually and interestingly gilt-ruled in all-over vertical stripes on covers and horizontal stripes on spine, in imitation of the Aldine binding style of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (1504–75, a Spanish diplomat, poet, humanist, and governor of Granada), differentiated by the addition of a gilt roll frame and a central cartouche of two cherubs maintaining either a baronial coronet or a very fancy halo over a partially obscured coat of arms: a possibly leonine creature rampant, sable. (The spine bears a more elaborate coronet.) Evidence of silk ties at top, bottom, and fore-edges of the binding; all edges gilt.

Searches of NUC and WorldCat locate only eight copies in North America.

•  Renouard, Alde, 1549:5; Adams A255; Index Aurel. 100.894; Graesse, I, 28; Brunet, I, 76.   Binding as above, spine with later gilt-stamped leather title-label; extremities rubbed, edges and spine extremities refurbished some time ago, joints starting from extremities and spine leather with small cracks, furniture now lacking with four small holes left behind on each cover. Endpapers and first few leaves with slim tracks of worming, affecting a few letters of text without loss of sense. Ahandsome volume despite above notes, and an impressive, uncommon example of the Torresani-Aldine partnership.  (31311)

•  Bibliography of the Fine Books Published by the Limited Editions Club, 396.   Binding as above, in original glassine dust wrapper and publisher's slipcase; volume clean and fresh, wrapper with small chips to spine extremities, slipcase gently sunned and with a little soiling, one corner bumped.  (30120)

Present here is vol. I containing the original Greek text, the Latin translation having been printed in a separate volume. Incomplete at the end, it lacks the final eight leaves or the last part of the Indica (37.3–43.14), only, with Arrian's Anabasis Alexandrou (Campaigns of Alexander) appearingcomplete as Books 1–7.

Binding: Contemporary alum-tawed pigskin over bevelled boards, remnants of the metal closures. Covers elaborately blind-embossed with several rolls and devices. Front cover has in its center panel the initials “A. W.,” the date 1539, and medallions of Manfred of Saxony and Luther, while the rear cover's center panel has medallions of Melanchthon and Erasmus.

•  Graesse, I, 227; Legrand, Bibliographie hellénique, III, 388; Adams A2009.   Binding toned to a pleasing dark tan. Old bookplate on front pastedown. Front free endpaper torn with loss. Vol. I only, and lacking those final eight leaves; the Anabasis complete. (20418)

Sadleir's analysis suggested to him the following probable sequence: a) the private edition, b) copies of the public edition with p. 236 in the same form as it appears in the private edition, c) copies of the public edition with p. 236 blank; and d) copies of the public edition with the complete new version of the text on p. 236.

However, the remnants of the binding preserved at the back of the present first volume — see note below andtop-right image above — are red moiré silk (as opposed to the brown cloth of the public edition), with the side panels and spine ornately blocked with a gilt design and the title within the gilt frame (the spine is rather worn, but legible). This suggests that only some of the twelve private copies were bound in leather, and others, or at least one, bound in this special silk cloth, gilt extra.

Barham began writing the short pieces making up this series as contributions to his friend and classmate's Bentley's Miscellany. The subject matter was “at first derived from the legendary lore of the author's ancestral locality in Kent, but soon [was] enriched by satires on the topics of the day and subjects of pure invention, or borrowed from history or the ‘Acta Sanctorum’. . . . The success of the ‘Legends’ was pronounced from the first, and when published collectively in 1840 they at once took the high place in humorous literature which they have ever since retained” (DNB).

Provenance: With R.H.D. Barham’s signature as noted above, and with the armorial bookplate of Sir David Lionel Salomons (1851–1925) in each volume.

•  NCBEL, III, 365; Sadleir 156a; Tinker 216 (public edition); Carter, Binding Variants, p.92. Bindings a bit darkened and slightly discolored at extremities, light rubbing to joints, some foxing to the prelims of the first volume, with an old tide-mark in the lower gutter areas of the plates; a tipped-in bookseller's description in the first volume. A very good, very interesting example of a very rare thing.  (18236)

Bindings: Contemporary signed bindings by E.P. Dutton & Co., of red morocco with covers framed in gilt triple fillets; spines with raised bands, gilt-stamped titles, and compartments framed in gilt double fillets. Board edges gilt-ruled, gilt inner dentelles. Upper page edges gilt. Original cloth covers and spines bound in at the back.

•  Sadleir 156b, e, & f; NCBEL, III, 365. Bindings as above, spines and upper board edges darkened with a bit of rubbing; free endpapers with offsetting from turn-ins. One volume with lower part of cover stained and the lower inner margin of the title-page and plates (not the text leaves!) waterstained. One plate evenly age-toned.

Although the work is here presented as a translation of a Persian manuscript done by “M. Esprit,” it is actually the work of Beauchamps, a French playwright and theatre historian. This is the second edition, following the first of 1728; various editions handled the obscurity level of the anagrams in different ways, with the present example offering a key at the back. This “renversée” key deciphers the anagrams and gives the solutions, but backwards: “Celulois” equals “Selliuoc.”

The work was translated immediately (1728) into English and published both in London and Dublin.

Binding:  Contemporary mottled calf, covers framed in gilt triple fillets, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label and gilt-stamped floral decorations. All edges marbled.

•  Brunet, II, 1064; Quérard, Les supercheries littéraires, I, 1254.   Binding as above, edges, joints, and extremities rubbed, with predictable acid-pitting to the mottling on the sides. Preliminary leaves with small pencilled and inked annotations, title-page with contemporary inked annotation regarding authorial information, endpapers with pencilled annotations on publication history, back free endpaper with affixed slip of early cataloguing, back pastedown with small shelving label. Scattered faint spots, pages overall clean.  (31101)

Binding:  20th-century hand-painted vellum, front cover with sailing ship between decorative bands accomplished in a style reminiscent of the Bayeux Tapestry, spine with title and decorations, back cover with castle tower and distant ship motif. Publisher's original tan paper wrappers with Celtic motifs bound in.

•  Binding as above, vellum slightly darkened, clean and tight. Front pastedown with small rubber-stamped monogram “MG.” Pages gently age-toned, else clean. One of the great medieval romances, and a truly lovely object.  (30283)

•  New, in publisher's gilt-stamped green cloth.