WITH A SURVEY OF ROMANCES: THE ROXBURGHE COPY
FERNÁNDEZ, Jerónimo.
The Famous and delectable History of Don Bellianis of Greece, or, the Honour of Chivalry. Containing his valiant Exploits strange and dangerous Adventures, with his admirable Love to the Princess Florisbella, Daughter of the Souldan of Babilond.
London, Francis Kirkman, 1673, 1671, 1672.
Three parts, 4to, pp. [6], 32, 49–96, 90–93; 88, 93–168; 2, ‘42’ [i.e. 78]; bound without the woodcut frontispieces to parts I and II (the same block) found in some copies; some foxing, rather browned in places, but a good copy; bound in nineteenth-century polished calf, gilt lozenge to covers, gilt turn-ins; a few pen trials, from the library of the Duke of Roxburghe, purchase note of J.D. Phelps pasted in.
Added to your basket:
The Famous and delectable History of Don Bellianis of Greece, or, the Honour of Chivalry. Containing his valiant Exploits strange and dangerous Adventures, with his admirable Love to the Princess Florisbella, Daughter of the Souldan of Babilond.
First complete edition of Francis Kirkman’s version of the chivalric romance of Belianis of Greece, a continuation of Amadis de Gaul first published in Spanish in 1547.
A partial English translation had appeared in 1598, and Kirkman had earlier published editions of parts I (1650) and II (1664), but ‘now you have it Compleat … without any expectation of any Alteration of Addition’. In the third part Kirkman took ‘more than ordinary pains in describing the ancient Kingdom of Ireland’.
Kirkman had been an early enthusiast of romances, which he had begun to collect at school, teaching himself French in order to translate Amadis de Gaul. His later output as a bookseller includes both these works and reissues of earlier English drama, of which he was a proto-bibliographer, listing 690 examples in his preface to Tom Tyler and his Wife (1661). The preface here similarly ‘surveys the available chivalric, Elizabethan, and heroic romances, its recommendations perhaps sustaining these titles’ long popular success’ (ODNB). It mentions his own translation of part of Amadis de Gaul alongside Valentine and Orson, the Seven Champions of Christendom, Palmerin of England, and many other chapbook staples, as well as Sidney’s Arcadia and the Urania of Lady Mary Wroth.
Provenance:
John Ker (1740–1804), 3rd Duke of Roxburghe, sold as lot 6364 in the 1812 auction catalogue of the Roxburghe library. Formed over the last three decades of his life by one of the most obsessive collectors in the history of bibliomania, it amounted to some 30,000 volumes. Lots 6066–6420 were devoted to ‘Romances’, including the celebrated Valdarfer Decamerone (1471), the sale of which was the occasion for the foundation of the Roxburghe Club. John Delafield Phelps (1764/5–1842), who purchased this volume for £1 6s, also reports the sale ‘in my presence’ of the Decamerone and two Caxton incunables; a founder member of the Roxburghe Club, he collected Gloucestershire books in particular.
