ESSEX HOUSE PRESS: SPENSER, Edmund.. Epithalamion.. London: Essex House Press, 1901, 1901.

Price: US$2502.37 + shipping

Description: First Essex House Press edition, number 62 of 150 copies only, each printed on vellum and hand-coloured. First published in 1595, Spenser wrote this ode for his bride on their wedding day. It is printed here as the fifth work in the Essex House Press Great Poems Series. The Essex House Press was founded by Charles Robert Ashbee and Laurence Hodson following the closure of William Morris's Kelmscott Press in 1897 and "came from the heart of the arts and crafts movement" (Franklin, p. 64). Ashbee bought the Kelmscott Press's Albion printing presses after William Morris's death, and employed one of the Kelmscott compositors, Thomas Binning. In 1902 "a bindery was established in the Guild, under the direction of Annie Power, who had been a student of Douglas Cockerell" (Crawford, p. 400). For this work Florence Kingsford Cockerell (1871-1949), one of the leading book illuminators of the English arts and crafts movement provided the illuminated letters. Kingsford Cockerell studied calligraphy under Edward Johnston and predominantly worked for the Ashendene Press. Ashbee, A Bibliography of The Essex House Press, p. 15; Franklin, p. 243; Ransom, Essex House Press 23. Alan Crawford, C.R. Ashbee: Architect, Designer & Romantic Socialist, 2005; John Mansfield Thomson, Farewell Colonialism: The New Zealand International Exhibition, Christchurch, 1906-07, 1998. Octavo. Original vellum, spine lettered in gilt, rose and "Soul is Form" blind-stamped to front cover. Printed in Caslon type. Hand-coloured frontispiece woodcut by Reginald Savage, illuminated letters in gilt, red, blue, and green by Florence Kingsford Cockerell, with tissue guards. Pastedowns lifting slightly from boards: a near-fine copy.

Seller: Peter Harrington. ABA/ ILAB., London, United Kingdom