The William Morris Manuscript of The Odes of Horace (Folio Society Limited Edition)

MORRIS, William (illuminator, with Edward Burne-Jones & Charles Fairfax Murray); HORACE (trans. W. E. Gladstone; commentary Clive Wilmer). The William Morris Manuscript of The Odes of Horace. London: The Folio Society, 2014. 2 vols.

Facsimile volume: Small 8vo (17.5 × 12 cm). Full brown Indian goatskin leather, bound by Smith Settle, West Yorkshire. Gilt titling to spine with raised bands. Gilt-decorated cover edges and doublures. 183 pp. Facsimile reproduction in full colour and gilt of Morris's illuminated manuscript, printed on Tatami paper by Castelli Bolis, Bergamo, Italy, reproduced from the original held in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Commentary volume: large slim 4to (29 × 22.5 cm), green-grey cloth boards with gilt text and border to front cover, 63 pp. Both volumes presented in a green cloth clamshell box designed by David Eccles, decorated in gilt and silver, with the leather facsimile volume seated in a burgundy velvet-lined recess with ribbon pull. Facsimile deluxe limited edition. Limited to 980 numbered copies, this being number 187.

Between 1869 and 1875, William Morris (1834–1896), already established as the central figure of the Arts and Crafts movement, turned his attention to the medieval art of manuscript illumination, hand-producing eighteen illuminated books in deliberate revival of a tradition that print had rendered obsolete four centuries earlier. Among these eighteen manuscripts were two great works of classical Latin literature: the Aeneid and the Odes of Horace. The Horace manuscript, produced in 1874, is one of the smallest Morris created and, in the judgment of scholars of his work, one of the most profusely and beautifully decorated.

This Folio Society facsimile, published in 2014, is the first ever reproduction of this manuscript, made available to collectors and scholars for the first time in the century and a half since its creation. It is accompanied by the verse translation of Horace's Odes made by William Ewart Gladstone together with a critical commentary by Clive Wilmer, the poet and critic, situating both the manuscript and the translation within their historical and artistic contexts.

Fine. Presents like new throughout. A beautiful copy.

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Catalogue Number: HH000664