This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 11/21/2024
[ENGLISH CIVIL WAR]. HYDE, Edward, First Earl of Clarendon (1609-1674). The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, Begun in the Year 1641… Oxford: Printed at the Theater, 1702-04. Large folios. Illustrated with frontispieces, title-page vignettes, numerous head and tailpieces and initials throughout. 3 volumes. [vi], xxiii, 557; [xvi], 581; [xxiv], 603, [22, Index] pp. Approximately 15 ¼ x 9”. Complete. Bound in contemporary full brown paneled calf, with blind floral cornerpieces; all volumes rebacked to style in modern brown calf, spines ruled, tooled and lettered in gilt in compartments, 6 raised bands (some wear, color correction to boards, new endleaves, some occasional minor soiling, foxing in text). Fine. THE RARE TRUE FIRST EDITION. A most attractive, handsome and solid copy, scarce. A magnificent set of Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion, “...the most valuable of all the contemporary accounts of the Civil Wars. His characters are not simply bundles of characteristics, but consistent and full of life, sketched sometimes with affection, sometimes with light humor…” (DNB). Since its publication at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Earl of Clarendon’s History of the English Civil War has remained one of the most important sources for our understanding of the events which changed the course of British history “[It] chronicles in absorbing detail the intrigues and upheavals, the alliances and confrontations, the triumphs and the tragedies, of the 1640s and 1650s. In elegant and vital prose it brings to life the personalities who shaped the era, and the principles for which a nation was divided” (Oxford University Press).