Ovid's Metamorphosis Englished

OVID   |   Francis CLEYN

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Ovid's Metamorphosis Englished
Ovid's Metamorphosis Englished
Ovid's Metamorphosis Englished
Ovid's Metamorphosis Englished

“ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL WORKS IN WESTERN LITERATURE”: OVID’S METAMORPHOSIS, IMPORTANT SANDYS TRANSLATION, ILLUSTRATED BY FRANCIS CLEYN, A LANDMARK IN ENGLISH BOOK ILLUSTRATION

(SANDYS, George) (CLEYN, Francis) OVID. Ovid's Metamorphosis Englished, Mythologiz'd, And Represented in Figures. An Essay to the Translation of Virgil's Aeneis. Oxford: John Lichfield, 1632. Folio, contemporary full tooled brown calf rebacked with original spine laid down, raised bands, later red morocco spine label. Housed in a custom clamshell box.

Second folio and the first revised and illustrated edition of George Sandys’ famous verse translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, with engraved title page, frontispiece portrait and 15 full-page copperplates by Francis Cleyn.

"In the Metamorphoses Ovid attempts no less a task than the linking together into one artistically harmonious whole all the stories of classical mythology. And this he does, until the whole range of wonders is passed in review, from the dawn of creation, when chaos was changed by divine fiat into the orderly universe, down to the age of the poet himself, when the soul of Julius Caesar was changed to a star and set in the heavens among the immortals. Every important myth is at least touched upon… The poem thus forms a manual of classical mythology, and is the most important source of mythical lore for all writers since Ovid's time" (Miller, Ovid III:xi-xii, Loeb Classical Library). Indeed, Metamorphoses, written in 7 A.D., stands as "one of the most influential works in Western literature. It is at once a comprehensive account of Latin mythology and a feat of fictional construction which taught innumerable later writers, among them Chaucer and Dante" (Clute & Grant, 739). Shakespeare, Marlowe, Drayton, Spenser, and Chapman were all deeply indebted to Ovid's "collection of legends of transformations" (Peck, 1151). By the middle of the 17th century, however, the rising tide of Puritan seriousness cast Ovid's mix of wit and sensuality into general disfavor. Sandys' translation was "pronounced by Dryden to be the best of the last age: and Pope affirmed, in his notes to the Iliad, that English poetry owed much of its present beauty to Sandys translations" (Lowndes, 1745). The first five books of his translation of the Metamorphoses appeared in 1621, and his complete translation was first published, in a folio edition, in London in 1626; Charles I granted him exclusive rights to Ovid for the next 21 years. This second, revised folio edition, the first illustrated edition, includes not only the 15 books of the Metamorphoses, but also Sandys' translation of the first book of Virgil's Aeneid, the remainder of which he did not translate. Each book of Ovid is accompanied by a full-page illustration by Francis Cleyn (engraved by Salomon Savery), "the first illustrator of significance in England, after Gheeraerts" (Hodnett, 56). Cleyn followed the earlier artistic convention of "presenting several incidents [in the same picture] in receding planes," and these are regarded as "the first important series of the 17th century in England" (Hodnett). With many misnumbered folios, as is common in books from this period. STC 18966. See Brueggemann, 619. See Moss II:357. Owner signatures, one to top margin of engraved title page. Occasional marginal annotations and light pencil underlining.

One small hole each to leaves Bb2 and Zz4, affecting text but not readability. Scattered, infrequent light dampstaining; minor worm holing to inner margin of quires Hhh through Mmm. Plate 14 shaved close at outer margin. Light age wear to contemporary calf boards. A handsome copy of this scarce, landmark publication.

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