Available Copies from Independent Booksellers
Price: US$3650.00 + shipping
Description: Doves Press edition of William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra ("Antony" given as "Anthony," following the First Folio), the third of the Doves Shakespeare productions, one of 200 copies on paper out of a total print run of 215. Inspired by Thomas North's great Renaissance translation of Plutarch, and first performed in 1607, the play features one of Shakespeare's most complex heroines: "Age cannot wither her, nor custome stale / Her infinite variety: other women cloy / The appetites they feede, but she makes hungry, / Where most she satisfies." Founded by T.J. Cobden-Sanderson and Emery Walker, the Doves Press departed from the decorative medievalism favored by earlier English private presses: "The publication of the first Doves book, a few days after the death of Queen Victoria, marked the end of that age, and set the standard for printing in the twentieth century." One year after the appearance of Anthony and Cleopatra, as his partnership with Walker was breaking down, Cobden-Sanderson would begin surreptitiously casting the original Doves type, punches, and matrices off the Hammersmith Bridge into the Thames, where most of them remain to this day. Tidcombe DP-29. A fine copy. Small quarto, measuring 9.25 x 6.5 inches: [6], 7-140, [4]. Original full limp vellum, spine lettered in gilt. Colophon and list of corrections to the 1623 folio text at rear. Printed in Doves type in red and black ink. Housed in a custom clamshell box.
Seller: Honey & Wax Booksellers, ABAA, Brooklyn, NY, U.S.A.
Price: US$3744.00 + shipping
Description: 238 x 172 mm. (9 3/8 x 6 3/4"). 3 p.l., 7-140 pp., [2] leaves (colophon and errata). Original flexible vellum by the Doves Bindery, gilt spine titling, edges untrimmed. Printed in red and black. Tidcombe DP-29; Tomkinson, p. 57. âA little natural variation (as always) in the grain of the vellum and covers tending to splay slightly, but in virtually pristine condition inside and out. This is a splendid copy of one of the series of Shakespeare works issued by Cobden-Sanderson's Doves Press. Although he printed 16 items before turning to something written by Shakespeare, seven of the last 35 Doves Press productions were authored by the Stratford bard. Probably first performed in 1607, "Anthony and Cleopatra," the tragic, classic story of lust and politics in ancient Rome and Egypt, is the third of those seven ("Hamlet" and the "Sonnets" were printed previously, in 1909). The text here is based on the First Folio, with errata added at the end. The Doves Press was founded in 1900 by Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson and Emery Walker to produce their ideal of the "Book Beautiful." Over the next 16 years, they produced 51 titles in which they demonstrated that printing with plain type (designed by Walker) that is well set and with good margins could produce notable work. As Cave says, the Doves Press books, "completely without ornament or illustration, . . . depended for their beauty almost entirely on the clarity of the type, the excellence of the layout, and the perfection of the presswork." After the partnership ended acrimoniously, Cobden-Sanderson threw Walker's beautiful type into the Thames, so it could never be used by anyone else. Doves Press items appear regularly in the marketplace, but "Anthony and Cleopatra" shows up less frequently than expected. ONE OF 200 COPIES on paper (and 15 copies on vellum).
Seller: Phillip J. Pirages Rare Books (ABAA), McMinnville, OR, U.S.A.