May 05, 2022 - Sale 2603

Sale 2603 - Lot 136

Price Realized: $ 40,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 20,000
Virgil trans. Gawin Douglas (1474?-1522)
The xiii. Bukes of Eneados of the Famose Poete Virgill Translatet out of Latyne verses into Scottish metir.

London: William Copland, 1553.

First edition, quarto, title page printed within elaborate woodcut compartment, text in black letter, with the inserted leaf in signature X and the leaf with "Ane exclamacion against detractouris" (Bb7) present; lacking the final blank; small hole in i8 and t4, each with a slight loss of text; blank corners torn from M8 and g1, outer margin of the title slightly stained and the inner margin with some holes (abrasions), some marginal dampstains at end; bound in very good full 18th century diced russia, boards and spine ornately tooled in gilt; marginal notes to title; final leaf with an unrecorded poem in working draft of fourteen lines that begins, "The night doth reast the bonds [...]"; all defects listed are slight, overall a very pleasing copy; ex libris Sir Thomas Phillipps, sold at auction 26 November 1974; sold again as part of the collection of the Garden Ltd., in 1989; housed in a modern full dark blue morocco folding case by Sangorski & Sutcliffe, 8 3/4 x 6 1/2 in.

Bishop Douglas, a poet in his own right, is best remembered for this, his magnum opus, the first rendering of Virgil's Aeneid from Latin into any Anglic language. In fact, his is the first full translation of any major poem from antiquity into a modern Germanic language. He completed the task in 1513, and added his own original verse prologues to each of the thirteen books. He also included the extra verse contributed to Virgil's original twelve by Mapheus Vegius in the 15th century.

STC 24797; Pforzheimer 1027; ESTC S119190; Langland to Wither 61.

From the Ken Rapoport Collection.