Edmund Spenser, 1590-1596

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.

The first edition of both parts of Spenser's great Tudor epic, finely bound in red morocco; with the first state of the title page. 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, the Welsh words in lines 4 and 5 of p. 332 are printed. Pforzheimer 969 and 970; STC S123180 and S117748; Grolier Langland to Wither 231 and 233.

Two volumes, quarto (180 x 130mm). (Vol. 1 with repairs to one corner and inner margin of title page, just touching imprint; vol. 1 also a little browned, with most headlines shaved, and a burn mark to a few leaves). Modern red morocco gilt, all edges gilt. Provenance: early marginalia in volume one – "Lu: Fortescue" (inscription to title page of volume two) – Clara & Irwin Strasburger (bookplates; Sotheby's New York, 25 June 1982, lot 467).