[KELMSCOTT PRESS]. SHAKESPEARE, William (1564–1616). The Po...

8vo. Printed in Golden type in red and black, woodcut title–pages for each poem with full woodcut page–borders, 10–line and smaller woodcut initial capitals. Near–contemporary full crushed olive levant with inlaid brown morocco borders of viny lilies and pontillé design gilt, covers with a central arabesque mandorla filled with more viny lilies and pontillé design gilt including four primary stemmed lilies forming a central cross within the mandorla, 6 compartments with 5 raised bands, olive and brown morocco lettering–pieces gilt in an Art Nouveau style font, remainder compartments filled with more lilies and pontillé designs, crushed olive doublures with a central crushed tan levant panel bordered with inlaid green morocco gilt within an outer inlaid brown morocco border of viny lilies and pontillé design gilt, tan levant endpapers, additional hand–marbled endpapers, top edge gilt (spine ever so slightly sunned); full green niger folding box with matching Art Nouveau lettering–pieces, gilt stamped–signed by Bayntun–Riviere. Provenance: Geoffrey Ecroyd (bookplate).

LIMITED EDITION, one of 500 copies printed on Flower paper of a total edition of 510, printed after the original copies of Venus and Adonis (1593), The Rape of Lucrece (1594), Sonnets (1609) and The Lover’s Complaint (1609). Cockrell in 1898 described the volume as “one of the rarest books issued from the Press” because of its popularity. IN AN EXQUISITE NEAR–CONTEMPORARY BINDING in the manner of Alfred De Sauty (1870–1949) who was “distinguished for the taste shown in the association of colours, and his finishing has some of the brilliant qualities of the French school, seen particularly in the finely studded [i.e. pointillé] tooling of which he seems particularly fond” (Tidcombe, “The Mysterious Mr. De Sauty” in For the Love of the Binding. Studies in Bookbinding History Presented to Mirjam Foot pp. 329–36). A Note by William Morris 11; Peterson A11; Ransom, Kelmscott 11.