[Rarebooks] fa: SIR PHILIP SIDNEY - WORKS (Pembroke's Arcadia etc.) 3 vols. 1725 - ExLib LORD ELDON

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, along with other 17th, 18th, & 19th-century titles, auctions ending Sunday, Sept. 16. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/8tv8bfj

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.


The Works of the Honourable Sr. Philip Sidney, Kt. In Prose and Verse. In Three Volumes. Containing, I. The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia. II. The Defense of Poesy. III. Astrophel and Stella. IV. The Remedy of Love; Sonnets, &c. V. The Lady of May. A Masque. VI. The Life of the Author. London: Printed for E. Taylor, A. Bettesworth, E. Curll, W. Mears, and R. Gosling, MDCCXXV [1725]. Three volumes, 8vo (20 cm), in full period paneled calf with gilt-stamped spines and morocco spine labels; engraved portrait frontispiece and 4 engraved plates, engraved vignette and woodcut decorations. ESTC T147519.

From the library of John Scott (1751-1838), 1st Earl of Eldon and Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, with his signature ("Eldon") and armorial bookplate on the front paste-down of each volume... An appealing set.

The five books of Pembroke's Arcadia take up almost the whole of vols. 1 and 2, with a sixth book (written by Richard Beling in 1633) comprising the first part of vol. 3. Each section, including Sidney's Poetical Works in vol. 3, has a separate title-page, dated 1724. Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), soldier, poet and patron of the arts, was the beau ideal of the Elizabethan courtier. Written for his sister the Countess of Pembroke, the Arcadia is a charming pastoral fantasia evoking an idealized golden age of chivalry, complete with tales of star-crossed lovers, jousts, battles, treachery, and kidnappings. "It has entertained… readers for over 400 years with its sensational treatment of sex, politics, violence, soporifics, mobs, and cross-dressing" and traces of its influence can be found in later works by Shakespeare (King Lear, Hamlet, Winter's Tale), Beaumont and Fletcher, Samuel Daniels, James Shirley, and others (Bullough, Geoffrey, ed. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare). The collection also includes Sidney's other great prose work, The Defense of Poesy, as well as the poem for which he is best remembered, Astrophel and Stella.