8vo. (190 x 148 mm) First leaf of text within a chromolithographed border and with an historiated initial, text embellished with gilt. (Some spotting to a few leaves.) Original leather-backed decorative papier-mâché boards with cut-out design over gilt cloth set with a central inset portrait of Shakespeare on upper cover and his initials and a laurel wreath to the lower cover, turn-ins gilt, edges gilt (hinge repaired; some cracking or chipping; covers slightly rubbed). Provenance: Albon Torven? Library (signature in pencil); Gloucestershire College of Art & Design Library (library stamp).

 

FIRST EDITION. An example of Humphrey’s “embellishment” of significant passages in the plays and poems of Shakespeare by “enshrining them, as it were, in a reliquary as rich as a combination of the typographic and lithochromic arts could form” (preface). McLean Victorian Book Design, p. 104.