SPENSER, Edmund (c.1552-1599). The Faerie Queene. Disposed into twelve books, fashioning XII. Morall Vertues. London: [John Wolf] for William Ponsonbie, 1590. –. The Second Part of the Faerie Queene, containing the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Bookes. London: [Richard Field] for William Ponsonby, 1596.

Bradley Martin copy of the first edition of both parts of Spenser's great Tudor epic, first state of the title. The Faerie Queene, dedicated to Queen Elizabeth and written in a new poetic form now known as the Spenserian stanza, is a sprawling and surreal allegorical poem populated by robot squires, lady knights, evil sorceresses, and sundry figures from both Classical mythology and English legend. Spenser's stanza, appropriate for a poem which combines the Italian and British cultural imaginations, is a hybrid adaptation of Scots rhyme royal and Italian ottava rima, consisting of eight lines of pentameter and a final alexandrine.

In this copy, volume one closes with the original final gathering Pp, which contains sonnets (but scandalously omitting one to Lord Burghley) and the errata. The cancellans gathering Gg, intended to replace leaves Pp6 and 7, is bound after it. The Welsh words in lines 4 and 5 of p. 332 are not printed, spaces having been left for them to be filled in by hand should any person actually able to spell the Welsh language be found. Pforzheimer 969 and 970; STC S123180 and S117748; Grolier Langland to Wither 231 and 233.

Two volumes, quarto (186 x 135mm). Woodcut devices on titles in both vols, full-page woodcut of Saint George, woodcut initials and typographic ornaments (toned; vol 1 title a little soiled with some neat repairs, including to woodcut ornament; vol 2 title repaired at gutter, a few small repairs to blank margins throughout, small burn hole affecting a few letters). 19th-century crushed red morocco by Bedford, fully-gilt green morocco doublures, edges gilt. Provenance: a few faded early marginal notes – red armorial stamp of rampant lion – Frank Brewer Bemis (bookplate) – Harold Greenhill (bookplate) – H. Bradley Martin (bookplate, his sale, Sotheby's New York, 1 May 1990, lot 3220).