The Faerie Queene
Lot 18

The Faerie Queene

Edmund Spenser, 1609

Closed6 October 2022

Price Realised

USD 10,080

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The Faerie Queene
Edmund Spenser, 1609
SPENSER, Edmund (c.1552-1599). The Faerie Queene, Disposed into XII. Bookes, Fashioning twelve Morall Vertues. London: H. L. for Mathew Lownes, 1609.

The Tennant copy of the first folio edition of Spenser's masterpiece. This is the first edition to print the Two Cantos of Mutabilitie, which constitute a sort of fragmentary Book VII of the poem and were not included in the first edition. Apparently this edition did not sell well, as two years later the publisher used the remaining sheets with the title cancelled as part of a collected edition of Spenser's works. Pforzheimer 971.

Folio (260 x 170mm). Woodcut printers device on title and part title, as well as final leaf, woodcut head- and tailpieces (margins of title and final leaf repaired, a few leaves of gathering F repaired at gutter). 19th-century red morocco gilt by Bedford, edges gilt (upper board starting, extremities worn). Provenance: Charles Tennant (1823-1906, "The Glen" bookplate, his catalogue p. 292.).