CLOUD-CUCKOO-LAND
ARISTOPHANES.
The Birds … Translated by the Rev. Henry Francis Cary … With Notes.
London: Printed for Taylor and Hessey … 1824.
8vo., pp. xxxvi, 179, [1]; uncut and partly unopened in the original publisher’s fine diaper cloth, spine lettered gilt, sunned; ticket of the Aberdeen booksellers D. Wyllie & Son.
Added to your basket:
The Birds … Translated by the Rev. Henry Francis Cary … With Notes.
First edition. ‘Given how much there is in Aristophanes to outrage and violate nineteenth-century manners and sensibilities, it may seem surprising how popular he was. The popularity came at the price of bowdlerizing much of the “grossness”, but there was admiration and even a certain yearning for his unbuttoned earthiness as well as for his aerial levity …
‘Henry Francis Cary, translator of Dante, turned out the first metrical version of The Birds in mainly iambic heptameters (“fourteeners”). This was one of many attempts to match the rollicking rhythm of the Greek’ (The Oxford History of Literary Translation into English, vol. IV, p. 184). It also contains the first appearance of the word ‘Cloudcuckooland’ (p. 76).
You may also be interested in...
[LANDOR, Walter Savage].
Count Julian: a Tragedy.
First edition of Landor’s first play, unacted, but a succès d’éstime, published in ‘a small edition’ (Oxford DNB). The episode in Spanish history which it treats – the vengeance taken by Don Julián, 8th-century ruler of Ceuta, against Roderigo, King of the Goths, who has dishonoured Julián’s daughter – was also used by Walter Scott (The Vision of Don Roderick, 1811), Southey (Roderick, the last of the Goths, 1814) and, earlier, William Rowley (All’s lost by Lust, 1633).
‘AS HEADSTRONG AS AN ALLEGORY’ SHERIDAN, Richard Brinsley.
The Rivals, a Comedy. As it is acted at the Theatre-Royal in Covent-Garden.
First edition of the play that introduced Mrs. Malaprop to the English stage.