The Complete Works of Sir John Vanbrugh; The plays edited by Bonamy Dobrée + The letters edited by Geoffrey Webb.
Bloomsbury: The Nonesuch Press, 1927-1928. 4 volumes, 4to; 10 1/8 x 7 1/2 inches (258 x 190 mm); pp. vol. 1, [4] xliv, 239 [1]; vol. 2, [10] 257 [5]; vol. 3, [10] 290 [4]; vol. 4, [4] xli [1] 284 [2], without the plates of houses, but with a frontispiece portrait of Vanburgh in vol. 4 Printed in monotype Caslon, with titles in Stephenson Blake Old face open. Quarter vellum binding with brown and white batik paper covered boards, deckle edges; title in gilt on spine. Interiors clean and bright, vellum spines lightly soiled.
One of 110 copies (no. 86) on English hand-made paper, the remainder of the 1300 print run on machine made paper.
[Dreyfus 49].
A complete collection of the plays and letters of Sir John Vanbrugh (1664 – 1726), "printed from the original quartos or octavos. the letters are for the first time gathered together... copied from the originals in the British Museum" [John Dreyfus. A History of The Nonesuch Press. London: 1981, p. 203]. Vanbrugh was an English architect, dramatist and herald, perhaps best known as the designer of Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard. He wrote argumentative and outspoken Restoration comedies which occasioned much controversy. He embraced the Whig cause of parliamentary democracy, was arrested on charges of espionage at Calais in 1688, and spent time at the Bastille before returning to England in 1693. He had successful years as a playwright and impresario, but changed his career to become an architect, although he had no formal training in this discipline. Vanbrugh's chosen style was the baroque, which had been spreading across Europe during the 17th century, but he reinterpreted it into a more subtle and understated version that became known as English baroque. His best known commissions were Blenheim Palace, Castle Howard, Kings Weston House, and Seaton Delaval Hall. Vanbrugh was knighted in 1714.
The NONESUCH PRESS was a private press founded in 1922 in London by Francis Meynell, his second wife Vera Mendel, and their mutual friend David Garnett who was a bookseller in Soho's Gerrard Street, in the basement of which the press began. It was unusual among private presses as it used a small hand press to design books, but had them printed by commercial printers, in order to produce book designs with the quality of a fine-press but available to a wider audience at lower prices. Meynell also wanted to demonstrate that "mechanical means could be made to serve fine ends." He believed that the production of exquisitely designed and produced books was not the preserve of the private press predicated upon the example established by William Morris's Kelmscott Press, which emphasized the primacy of the hand press printed book.
Condition: Near fine.
Item number: 1086
Price: $300.00
Share: