The Courtier's Library, Or Catalogus Librorum Aulicorum incomparabilium et non vendibilium
Nonesuch Press, 1930. Limited Edition -- Of this edition 950 copies have been printed for sale in England and America in the Fell types by John Johnson printed to the University at the Oxford University Press upon auvergne hand-made paper. This is number 912. 12mo., 93 pages including textual notes, bound in a plain functional binding. -- Title page has red border. -- Verso of title page has small spot whited out. -- Appears to be bound temporarily in boards with intentions of a custom binding to be added later. (see photos). -- A manuscript of an early work by John Donne, a scurrilous academic joke that could have cost the poet his reputation – and maybe his head – if it had fallen into the wrong hands, has been discovered in a trunk in the archives of Westminster Abbey. The manuscript may be the earliest surviving copy of what is ostensibly a library catalogue in Latin: the numbered book titles are all invented, and Donne’s list is in fact a string of savage and frequently smutty jokes, many about named contemporary figures. Book 21 is supposedly The Judges’ Handbook, “containing the many confessions of poisoners given to Justice Manwood, and used by him afterwards in wiping his buttocks, and in examining his evacuations”.-theguardian. Very good. Item #9719
Bookplate of Robert Hall, an avid collector of Kelmscott Press books. "On the library table are Kelmscott works, including William Morris’s The Glittering Plain and his 1895 translation of Beowulf. All the books are clearly bound in the distinctive Kelmscott full limp vellum tied with silk ribbons. The Wood Beyond the World is open to show a Morris-designed woodcut border and frontispiece. Leaning against the bookcase is a copy of the 1896 edition of Chaucer".-contentsinacottageblogspot.
Price: $65.00