Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$918.52 + shipping
Condition: Good
Description: 1827. Septimus Prowett . Hardcover. ACCEPTABLE Leather boards. Gilt titles. Slight edgewear. Patterned spine. Spine worn. Previous owners name on front inside board. Spine cracked. End pages marked. Foxing throughout. 9 x 6.
Seller: Cambridge Rare Books, Cambridge, GLOUC, United Kingdom
John Milton. The Paradise Lost of Milton (2 Vols.). Septimus Prowett, London, 1827.
Price: US$1500.00 + shipping
Condition: Very Good
Description: The very important 1827 London edition, marking the original appearance of illustrator John Martin's breathtaking mezzotint engravings. Complete in 2 quarto volumes, constituting 12 books all told. Bound in a contemporary-to-the-period (if not the publisher's original) dark-brown 1/4 leather over light-brown marbled boards. Bright git-titling to the spines (with just a bit of rubbing), gilt-bordering at the front and rear panels (showing a bit of offsetting), all edges gilt. Very light scuffing along the spines, light wear at the spine ends. Internally very sharp, with mild, intermittent foxing to a number of the pages but, thankfully, all of Martin's plates very clean, if not bordering on pristine. Professionally, subtly reinforced at the inner hinges, making for a strong. very sturdy binding. The remarkable illustrations by John Martin (1789-1854), the renowned English painter and engraver, beautifully complement Milton's ethereal text.
Seller: APPLEDORE BOOKS, ABAA, WACCABUC, NY, U.S.A.
Price: US$8495.77 + shipping
Description: First Martin edition in book form, a most handsome copy of the scarcer and more desirable large plate issue. John Martin's Paradise Lost holds a strong claim to be the finest illustrated edition of the poem ever produced. Already famous as an artist for his bold and melodramatic paintings, Martin was commissioned by Septimus Prowett to turn his talents to Milton. Unlike other artists in the period who were commissioned for book illustration, who generally produced paintings which were then replicated as engravings, Martin produced his illustrations directly as mezzotints. The possibilities of mezzotints, which allow far greater detail and experimentation with lighting than usual steel engravings, were fully exploited by Martin, and in turn Paradise Lost "was ideal material for Martin, who echoed Milton's solemnity while opening out his cadences in the imagery of groves and chases bathed in silvery light and an underworld where fires tongue the darkness and bridges span nothingness and Satan's armies infest the gloom. In mezzotint Martin's vision thrived" (ODNB). Martin engraved each illustration twice, on a larger and a smaller plate size. The work was issued in eight different formats, four with the larger plates and four with the smaller. There is no priority between the larger or smaller plate issues, or the eight formats. Yet the plate size is a major consideration for the collector and certainly to be preferred, as the larger plates are superior in detail and execution; the smaller mezzotints "suffer greatly from reduction" (Ray, p. 45). Prior to their publication in the present book form, the plates were first published in 12 parts from 1825 to 1827. Muir, p. 75; Ray 69A. Two volumes bound in one, large quarto (380 x 270 mm). Contemporary burgundy morocco, elaborately gilt-tooled, turn-ins and edges gilt. With 24 mezzotint illustrations by Martin with tissue guards, in the larger format. A very handsome binding with only minor rubbing to extremities, some offsetting from plates, occasional light foxing, chiefly to margins. Generally excellent condition.
Seller: Peter Harrington. ABA/ ILAB., London, United Kingdom