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Goldsmith, Oliver.
The Poems of Oliver Goldsmith. Edited by Robert Aris Willmott... A New Edition, With Illustrations by Birket Foster and R. N. Humphreys. Printed in Colour by Edmund Evans.
Publisher: Routledge, Warne, and Routledge; London;
Date of Publication: 1860
Stock Code: 12406
[Second Edition]. Quarto, pp., xxi, [1], 161, [1]. Colour frontispiece and 50 in-text engravings printed in colour; decorative initials, head-and tail-pieces and gilt-ruled borders throughout. Contemporary chocolate polished brown calf by HayDay, with 5 raised bands and gilt titles to spine, extensively tooled in blind with central embellishments and borders to bevelled boards. All edges gilt; marbled endpapers. A little light scattered foxing, mainly to prelims and final leaves. A very good copy. Ruari McLean described Edmund Evans’s edition of the works of Goldsmith as “... colour printing of Birket Foster as it’s best, and also has a large number of delicate two-colour decorations by Henry Noel Humphrey’s... A second edition appeared in 1860 with additional colour engravings, including one of Goldsmith’s tomb at the end of the Preface. It is one of the gems of Victorian book production... achieves a delicacy that makes this book perhaps the printer’s and artist’s masterpiece: certainly nothing they produced afterwards surpassed it.” A very attractive copy in a contemporary binding by HayDay in the high Victorian style. With an attractive presentation plate to Charles Batten from the Pawnbrokers of England to front paste-down, printed in colour and gilt. £200.00