OVID.
P. Ovidii Nasonis operum …
Leiden, [Bonaventure & Abraham] Elzevir, 1629.
Three vols, 12mo, pp. [xxiv], 344; [16], 444, [6 (blank)]; [12], 420; woodcut ‘Solitaire’ device to title-pages, woodcut initials; slightly toned but a good copy in early eighteenth-century panelled red morocco gilt, covers later stamped with the crest of James Harris, first Earl of Malmesbury (BAB stamp 5), joints rubbed, headcaps chipped; front endpapers of vol. I with some pencil quotations from Ovid dated 4 August 1722.
First Elzevir edition, newly edited by Daniel Heinsius based on the Plantin edition of 1578.
Provenance: from the library of the Earl of Malmesbury (1746–1820), the leading British diplomatist of the late eighteenth century. Though ‘untroubled by serious scholarly achievement’ at Merton College, ‘this changed when he left Oxford in 1765 and quite deliberately began to prepare himself for a career in diplomacy’. His first stop was a year in Leiden, where he taught himself Dutch, followed by a grand tour finishing with a posting in Spain that kicked off his career.
Brunet IV, col. 272; Rahir 288; Willems 317.
