THE PALACE OF PLEASURE.
With an Introduction by Hamish Miles and illustrations by Douglas Percy Bliss. In four volumes, totalling over 1,000 pages, with coloured (pochoir?) frontispiece to each volume, plus numerous black & white pictorial headpieces; tall impl. 8vo; qr. natural linen with printed cloth title labels at head of spines, patterned papered boards, occasionally a trifle soiled; t.e.g., others uncut; bookplate of Australian bookseller and bibliophile Harry Muir on the upper pastedowns, short closed tear to fore-edge margin pp. 131/2 in Volume I, outer leaves faintly offset, a couple of spots of foxing; The Cresset Press, London, 1929. One of 500 numbered sets on Arches mould-made paper (of a total edition of 530), printed by the University Press, Oxford. Ransom, Selective Checklists, pp. 7-8. *With the original 4 page prospectus (creased from folding and lightly browned) loosely inserted. William Painter (1540?-1595) was Clerk of the Ordnance in the Tower of London. His popular collection of Pleasant histories and excellent Novels was first published in two volumes in 1566-7. Painter drew on various (mainly classical) sources for his stories, including Herodotus, Plutarch, and Boccaccio, and in turn his work became a sourcebook for Shakespeare (including Romeo and Juliet), Webster, Beaumont & Fletcher, and others. Item #136254
Price: $500.00