Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Shakespeare’s Ovid)

321pp.; 31 x 22.6 cm. Linen backed pale blue paper covered boards. Label printed in black pasted to spine. Published London: The De La More Press, 1904 “Though it is the most beautiful book in the English language, I am not citing it for its decorative purposes but its narrative quality.”   — EP, ABC of Reading “Ezra Pound has written that he doesn’t think anyone can know anything at all about the art of lucid narrative in English if he hasn’t seen all fifteen books of Ovid’ Elizabethan translator, Arthur Golding. That is a good way of putting it, and yet I imagine Golding has rarely been read cover to cover.”   — Robert Lowell One of the most appeasing editions of Golding’s Metamorphoses (a translation elsewhere known as Shakespeare’s Ovid for its noticeable influence on the Bard), no. 229 of 300 copies printed on hand-made paper by The De La More Press in London. A beautiful copy, light edge-wear and staining to the boards, the paper label on spine curling a bit, but inside fine & throughout. With the bookplate of Colin Stanley Crosse to ffep, and a further of the Royal College of Art, College Library to ffpd, with their crimp to the title page. A book that was for Pound, alongside Confucius, his religion, and an immensely important text for the reading of The Cantos.…