Dantes Inferno Divine Comedy by Alighieri Dante, Signed (3 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Good. 1st Edition. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1918. 397 pages. First edition, first printing. Signed on front endpaper by author, commentary provider and translator, Courtney Langdon. Previous owner's name on front pastedown. Toning to endpapers. Black cloth shows handling and minor light scuffing. Bumping at tips. Shelf-rubbing along edges. Cloth shows a wrinkle. This is Volume 1 of Langdon's three volumes of his translation of Dante?s Divina Commedia into English blank verse; published between 1918 and 1921. Langdon a noted Harvard professor whose course on the Divine Comedy was affectionately known by students as ?Courtney?s Hell Course.? Good+. Signed by Author(s).

First Phillips trade edition, first impression, inscribed by him on the title page, "For Edith with very best wishes from Tom Phillips". Phillips's (1937-2022) achievement, incorporating his own modern English translation of the Inferno alongside illustrations in which his art interacts with the printed text in his signature style, is considered one of the major livres d'artistes of the post-war period. The deluxe original edition was produced in 1983 at the Talfourd Press in a run of 185 copies, each issued at £10,000. This trade edition includes a new commentary in which Phillips explains his artistic choices and outlines sources of inspiration both traditional and modern, from medieval manuscripts and Gustave Doré to comic books and King Kong. Quarto. Original green cloth, spine lettered in gilt, the artist's gilt monogram on front cover, illustrated endpapers, brown silk bookmarker. With dust jacket. Frontispiece, vignette, and 137 full-page illustrations, almost all in colour, by Phillips. Book fresh and crisp; jacket with a little light soiling, bright and sharp, verso with small abrasion and pieces of tape, no price on flaps as issued: a fine copy in very good jacket.

Folio (34 cm wide x 42.5 cm high). 216 pages. Hardcover / Binding in full green morocco with lettering and Dante's head as bronze sculpture per inlet to front cover. Binding by Douglas Cockerell, signed "WHS", during his directorship of W.H.Smith & Son (1905 - 1914). The manuscript is on excellent paper, watermarked O.W.P. & A.C.L. [O.W. Paper & Arts Co. Ltd., established by English painter John William North (1842-1924) in 1895]. The binding rubbed and with some small damages, in need of some minor restoration but overall still very good. The interior, the paper and the artwork all in excellent condition besides one of the juxtaposed photographs (Filippina Lippo) removed from the manuscript with some residue of the photograph remaining and some of the photographs with some dogears and minimal discoloration. All the original artwork in spectacular and fresh condition. The manuscript is a spectacular find and the quality of its execution is of utmost interest for any lover of rare books, manuscripts and special bindings. The circle of Douglas Cockerell, his involvement in one of the most beautiful books ever printed: the Ashendene Press Dante, as well as Cockerell being the binder of this unique manuscript, the fantastic paper used for the manuscript by one of the idyllist movement's central figures, John William North, and the wonderful Dante - theme of the manuscript with illuminated poetry from the Divine Comedy and the unique style of collage art, lets us rightfully dream that the anonymous composer of the manuscript was an important or at least peripheral member to either the Arts and Crafts Movement, the Ashendene Press or it was someone who worked in the style of the calligraphy schools that were inspired by William Morris or even earlier epigones like Owen Jones. Sprache: english.