5 BAUMAN RARE BOOKS T he Faerie Queene is one of the most glorious of English poems. It is also one of the most seminal; its influence can be traced in a straight line all the way to the 19th-century Romantics. It is no wonder that Lamb called Spenser ‘the poet’s poet’; he has been a source of inspiration for countless followers” (Kunitz & Haycraft, 488). “Spenser is preeminently a moral poet… The object of his own poem is to make vice ugly and virtue attractive. No other poet has painted with more terrible truth the images of Despair, Slander, Care, Envy and Distraction, the Blatant Beast of Scandal and the brazen dragon of Sin… To Spenser and the men of his age, to all the noble spirits to whom since The Faerie Queene has been an inspiration next only to the Bible and Shakespeare, these things have counted among the most significant forces in the world” (Baugh et al., 498). To accommodate what was essentially a new kind of poetry Spenser invented a new rhyme scheme, the nowubiquitous Spenserian stanza, into which he could cast this beautiful romance. A number of the lines in The Faerie Queene are among the best-known and most lyrical in English, and as a whole it ranks as one of the finest long allegorical poems ever written. A towering monument in English literature, The Faerie Queene stands alongside the works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton in the vastness of its influence. Full-page woodcut of St. George and the dragon on p. 184 of Volume I. Grolier, Langland to Wither, 231 and 233. Pforzheimer 969-70. From the celebrated library of H. Bradley Martin, with his bookplates. Martin amassed one of the world’s finest book collections. The sale of his 10,000-volume collection spanned two years, 198990, and the quantity and quality of his holdings led to comparisons with such earlier collectors as Robert Hoe and J.P. Morgan. Bookplates of Harold Greenhill and Frank Brewer Bemis, red stamp of armorial lion rampant, holding a crown, on p. 590 (blank) of Volume I and on title page of Volume II. Title pages with expert restoration, not affecting text but just touching the woodcut ornament on the first one; marginal repairs to corners of Cc3 and Cc4 in Volume II, not affecting text. A beautiful copy with a sterling provenance. “He oft finds med’cine, who his griefe imparts; But double griefs afflict concealinag harts, As raging flames who striveth to supresse.” “
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