An Exceptional Copy
WORDSWORTH, Christopher.
Greece: pictorial, descriptive, and historical … With upwards of three hundred and fifty Engravings on Wood and twenty-eight on Steel, illustrative of the Scenery, Architecture, and Costume of that Country. By Copley Fielding, F. Creswick, D. Cox jun., Harvey, Paul Huet, Meissonier, Sargent, Daubigny, Jaques, and other Artists. London, William S. Orr and Co., 1840.
Large 4to (c. 285 x 235 mm), pp. xxvii, [1, blank], 356; with an additional steel-engraved title and 25 steel-engraved plates on India paper (mounted and with captioned tissue guards), two steel-engraved maps hand-coloured in outline (with tissue guards), and 363 wood engravings on India paper mounted in the letterpress; some foxing to preface leaf, pp. 229–230, and to tissue guard facing p. 353, very occasional light foxing elsewhere, small tears to plate facing p. 63, that facing p. 60 without its tissue guard; a very good, large copy on thick paper; contemporary green crushed morocco, gilt floral and foliate border framed with triple gilt fillets to covers, spine in compartments lettered and richly decorated in gilt, all edges gilt, gilt board edges and turn-ins, marbled endpapers; very slight rubbing to joints and extremities, front board slightly bowed, small marks to covers; gilt arms to covers of Archibald Acheson, 3rd Earl of Gosford (1806–1864).
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Greece: pictorial, descriptive, and historical … With upwards of three hundred and fifty Engravings on Wood and twenty-eight on Steel, illustrative of the Scenery, Architecture, and Costume of that Country. By Copley Fielding, F. Creswick, D. Cox jun., Harvey, Paul Huet, Meissonier, Sargent, Daubigny, Jaques, and other Artists.
First edition, one of the rare copies in quarto format with the plates and in-text woodcuts on India paper.
The nephew of William Wordsworth, Christopher (1807–1885) was an outstanding classical scholar, a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, headmaster of Harrow School, and bishop of Lincoln. ‘During a prolonged visit to Greece and the Ionian Islands he made a conjecture as to the site of Dodona which was later corroborated. He was the first Englishman to be presented to King Otho. Passing over the heights of Mount Parnes in deep snow, he and his party were attacked by brigands; Wordsworth was injured in the shoulder by a stiletto, but managed to escape capture. Two books of a pictorial and descriptive kind on Greece (1839) and Athens and Attica (1836) followed his return’ (ODNB).
Greece is more commonly found in octavo format, dated 1839 or 1840. Blackmer notes that this special quarto format was advertised with the warning that ‘as only a small number of this Edition is printed, early application will be necessary to secure them’.
The plates include views of Athens, the plain of Marathon, the Acropolis and Parthenon, Mount Olympus, Corfu, and Corinth, while the woodcuts depict mythological and historical scenes, landscapes, ancient ruins, and costume, and include numerous decorative initials.
Provenance: Archibald Acheson, 3rd Earl of Gosford, was educated at Christ Church, Oxford (B.A. 1828), and sat as Member of Parliament for County Armagh between 1830 and 1847. His library was sold in 1878 to James Toovey, and was dispersed at auction in London by Puttick and Simpson in April 1884. This was lot 3205 (the binding attributed to C. Lewis) and sold for £2 7s to Lewin. Quaritch’s annotated copy of the sale catalogue contains the following note by E.H. Dring: ‘The books … that contained plates, were as a rule badly foxed on account of them having been kept in the North of Ireland where the atmosphere is very damp’ – our Wordsworth is happily an exception.
Blackmer 1841.