A Medieval Bestiary
Boston: David R. Godine, 1971.
Limited First Edition. Hardcover.
First Edition. #68 of one thousand deluxe copies printed on a specially made Monadnock wove paper, one of 900 bound in cloth over boards and enclosed in a slip-case. Includes 15 original wood engravings by Gillian Tyler.
The first modern prose rendering of a Middle English Bestiary. From the Dr. Elliott’s foreword: “The Bestiary purports to be a scientific compendium, but it was popular in a time when Man, not Nature, was thought to be at the center of the world's design; it thus most properly belongs to a humanistic tradition, since it really tells us more about human beings and the history of ideas than about natural history. The extraordinary popularity of the Bestiary for over a millennium is enough in itself to around our curiosity and interest.” Beasts included here: Leo, Quila, Serpens, Formica, Cervus, Vulpes, Aranea, Cetegrandia, Sirena, Elephas, Turtur, Panthera, Columba.
Item #9018668-5/8 x 11-3/4", quarter off-white linen, orange cloth over boards, gray endpapers, unpaginated, foreword, bibliography, illustrated with 15 wood engravings printed in black, Bestiary descriptions printed in blue with red titles.
Light foxing to spine cloth, else a fine, clean, crisp, copy in crisp durst wrapper with a toned spine and a few dots of foxing, in protective mylar. Housed in very good lightly rubbed slip-case with a few shallow bumps.
Price: $75.00