[Rarebooks] fa: THE TRAGEDIES OF AESCHYLUS - Richard Potter - First Edition/4to - Norwich: 1777

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, April 8. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/ybs5vcue

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Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


Aeschylus; Richard Potter (trans.): The Tragedies of Æschylus translated. By R. Potter. Norwich: Printed by J. Crouse, in the Market-Place, 1777. FIRST EDITION, 4to (26.5 cm), in full period calf, gilt-tooled spine and gilt-lettered spine label; xxviii, [8], 519, [1] pp.; with the half-title and list of subscribers. ESTC T87012.

First edition of Robert Potter’s translation of Aeschylus, handsomely printed by this provincial press; a London edition was published two years later by Strahan and Cadell. Potter (1721-1804), a vicar, translator and poet, established the convention of using blank verse for Greek hexameters and rhymed verse for choruses. He later translated the works of Euripides (1781-83) and Sophocles (1788) but his Tragedies of Aeschylus was his best known work and was, in fact, the only English-language version of the plays available until well into the next century. The subscribers include the philosopher-poet James Beattie, the artist-caricaturist Henry Bunbury, the eminent musicologist Dr. [Charles] Burney, Henry Thrale (husband of Hester), Horatio Walpole, the poet Thomas Warton, the brewer Samuel Whitbread, the Prince of Wales, the Bungay Book Society, and many other notables.

Binding with some rubbing and staining, wear to the edges and spine ends, rear board detached, front joint professionally repaired; contents with scattered mostly light spotting throughout, some creasing and browning/wear to the edges of the half-title and title-pages; else generally quite clean and sound. Front paste-down with the early engraved booklabel of Josh. Henry Green.