"TORMENTS SHOWN WITH MINUTE AND SOMETIMES SHOCKING FIDELITY": DORÉ’S MAGNIFICENT EDITION OF DANTE’S ENTIRE DIVINE COMEDY

(DORÉ, Gustave) DANTE. CARY, Henry Francis, translator. The Doré Dante: The Vision of Hell; The Vision of Purgatory and Paradise. London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, 1868. Two volumes. Folio, half red morocco gilt, patterned red cloth boards, elaborately gilt-decorated spines, raised bands, uncut. $4200.

Folio edition of one of Gustave Doré’s most famous illustrated works, the complete Vision of Dante Alighieri, with frontispiece portrait of the poet and 135 full-page wood-engravings, handsomely bound by Riviere.

"One can hardly deny that Doré is not merely one of the most popular but also one of the greatest of all illustrators… He gladly subjugated his imagination, aiming at literal renderings of the precise descriptions of the Inferno. Thus the varied torments of the dwellers in Hell are shown with minute and sometimes shocking fidelity" (Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book, 327-28). In illustrating Dante's 14th-century masterpiece, Doré "was adrift on dreams of splendor, with flights of fancy that are still inspirational to the religious and the non-religious" (Malan, 95). His rendition of Dante's Inferno—using Henry Francis Cary's landmark translation, first published in 1814 and still "the translation which, on Dante's name being mentioned, occurs first to the mind" (DNB)—appeared in 1861 to both critical acclaim and commercial success. The artist then completed illustrations for Purgatory and Paradise in 1868, with the present London folio edition being the first English-language printing to combine all three parts. Volume I with two copies each of plates 12 and 22.

Malan, 263-65. Small inked acquisition note by Dante scholar and collector Francis Capper Brooke, signed "F.C.B., 24 Nov. 1871," with a laid-in bookseller's letter from 1974 confirming provenance.

Mild to moderate foxing. Bindings lightly rubbed. An impressive set in extremely good condition.