Sale Price:
£425.00
Original Price:
£495.00
1924 First Edition 20 Colour Plates
THE ODYSSEY OF HOMER
By S.H. Butcher, Andrew Lang
KEY DETAILS
Condition: Very Good
Format: Hardcover, quarto (4to 9 1⁄2 × 12 in 241 × 305 mm )
Note: Binding/size selection follows standard bibliographic conventions and is approximate; exact measurements may vary.
Published By: The Medici Society, London, London, 1924
Language: English
Limited Edition: 181/500 Copies
Illustrated By: William Russell Flint
Provenance: Contemporary presentation inscription to the front free endpaper: “To Baby, With dearest love From Mum. Xmas. 1926.”
Collation: pp. xxviii, 315, [5]; colour frontispiece + 19 further mounted colour plates, all with captioned tissue guards.
Dust Jacket: None, as issued
SKU: BTETM0002320
Shipping Info: Approximate Package Dimensions H: 12.5, L: 60, W: 25 (Units: cm), W: 4Kg
Tracked Shipping, Insurance Coverage as per Customer Request
DESCRIPTION
The Odyssey of Homer
Done into English Prose by S. H. Butcher and Andrew Lang. London: The Medici Society, 1924.
First Edition. Limited to 530 numbered copies, of which 500 were offered for sale. This is copy No. 181.
Illustrated with 20 Colour Plates by William Russell Flint
One of the most attractive early twentieth-century illustrated editions of Homer's Odyssey.
Large quarto, bound in the publisher's original white buckram over bevelled boards, with gilt-lettered leather labels to the spine. Top edge gilt, remaining edges uncut. Illustrated with twenty mounted colour plates after watercolours by William Russell Flint, comprising a colour frontispiece and nineteen further plates, each with its original captioned tissue guard.
Flint completed the watercolours for this edition in 1914, but publication was delayed by the outbreak of the First World War and the work did not finally appear until 1924. The resulting volume is one of the major illustrated books of Flint's early career, combining the classical subject matter for which much of his work is admired with the substantial production values of the Medici Society.
The Butcher and Lang prose translation had first appeared in 1879 and became one of the best-known English prose renderings of the Odyssey. This 1924 edition therefore represents the first edition with Flint's illustrations / first edition thus, rather than the first appearance of the translation.
PROVENANCE
Contemporary presentation inscription to the front free endpaper: “To Baby, With dearest love From Mum. Xmas. 1926.”
The inscription dates from only two years after publication and provides an attractive piece of contemporary ownership history.
CONDITION, COLLATION & COPY NOTES
Publisher's original white buckram with bevelled boards and leather spine labels. Binding generally age-toned and soiled, as commonly encountered with this particularly unforgiving white cloth, with rubbing and bumping to the extremities and wear/fraying at the spine ends.
The leather spine labels show rubbing, edge wear and losses, particularly to the lower label. Boards remain sound and the binding is firm.
Endpapers substantially browned, with the contemporary Christmas 1926 presentation inscription noted above. Some scattered light spotting and marginal toning internally, but the text and illustrated leaves remain generally clean.
Complete with all twenty mounted colour plates by William Russell Flint and their captioned tissue guards. The plates retain particularly good colour and present considerably better than the exterior binding.
Top edge gilt; fore-edge and lower edge uncut.
Please see Photos as part of condition report.
REFERENCES
Gardner, Keith S. Sir William Russell Flint RA PPRWS 1880–1969: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Unsigned Limited Edition Works, 1994, p. 117.
WorldCat: The Odyssey of Homer, Medici Society, London, 1924; OCLC 16411067.
The edition is bibliographically recorded as comprising 530 numbered copies and twenty colour plates after Flint's watercolours.
SYNOPSIS
Homer's Odyssey is one of the foundational works of Western literature and the great surviving epic of homecoming, endurance and identity.
Following the fall of Troy, Odysseus, King of Ithaca, attempts to return to his wife Penelope and son Telemachus. His voyage becomes a ten-year struggle against gods, monsters, temptation and fate.
Among the celebrated episodes are Odysseus's encounter with Polyphemus the Cyclops, the enchantress Circe, his descent into the Underworld, the song of the Sirens, passage between Scylla and Charybdis, and his long detention by the nymph Calypso.
Meanwhile, Ithaca has been overrun by suitors seeking the hand of Penelope, who continue to consume Odysseus's estate while assuming him dead. Returning at last in disguise, Odysseus tests the loyalty of his household before revealing himself and reclaiming his home and kingdom.
Beyond its adventure narrative, the Odyssey explores loyalty, hospitality, intelligence, temptation, identity and the longing for home. Flint's romantic and classically inspired watercolours are exceptionally well suited to its mythological world.
AUTHOR BIO
Samuel Henry Butcher (1850–1910) was an Anglo-Irish classical scholar and academic, educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. He held professorships of Greek at University College London and the University of Edinburgh and became one of the leading British classical scholars of his generation.
Andrew Lang FBA (1844–1912) was a Scottish writer, poet, literary critic, classicist, folklorist and anthropologist. A remarkably prolific author and translator, he is now perhaps most widely remembered for his celebrated series of colour fairy books, beginning with The Blue Fairy Book in 1889.
Butcher and Lang's prose Odyssey, first published in 1879, sought to reproduce the dignity and narrative character of Homer while remaining accessible to the English reader. It became one of the most familiar prose translations of the work in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
ILLUSTRATOR
William Russell Flint
Sir William Russell Flint RA, PRWS (1880–1969) was a Scottish artist, watercolourist and illustrator, particularly celebrated for his figurative and classical subjects.
Born in Edinburgh, Flint trained at the Royal Institution School of Art before moving to London, where he worked as a medical illustrator and subsequently for The Illustrated London News. His exceptional command of watercolour brought him considerable recognition, and he became a member of the Royal Watercolour Society in 1917, later serving as its President from 1936 to 1956. He was elected a Royal Academician in 1933 and knighted in 1947.
Flint produced illustrations for a number of major literary and classical works, and his images for the Odyssey rank among his most substantial early book commissions. The watercolours were completed in 1914, although wartime conditions delayed publication until 1924.
Their combination of classical architecture, Mediterranean landscape, dramatic narrative and idealised figure painting made them particularly well suited to Homer's epic and has helped make this Medici Society edition one of the more collectible illustrated Odysseys of the period.
1924 First Edition 20 Colour Plates
THE ODYSSEY OF HOMER
By S.H. Butcher, Andrew Lang
KEY DETAILS
Condition: Very Good
Format: Hardcover, quarto (4to 9 1⁄2 × 12 in 241 × 305 mm )
Note: Binding/size selection follows standard bibliographic conventions and is approximate; exact measurements may vary.
Published By: The Medici Society, London, London, 1924
Language: English
Limited Edition: 181/500 Copies
Illustrated By: William Russell Flint
Provenance: Contemporary presentation inscription to the front free endpaper: “To Baby, With dearest love From Mum. Xmas. 1926.”
Collation: pp. xxviii, 315, [5]; colour frontispiece + 19 further mounted colour plates, all with captioned tissue guards.
Dust Jacket: None, as issued
SKU: BTETM0002320
Shipping Info: Approximate Package Dimensions H: 12.5, L: 60, W: 25 (Units: cm), W: 4Kg
Tracked Shipping, Insurance Coverage as per Customer Request
DESCRIPTION
The Odyssey of Homer
Done into English Prose by S. H. Butcher and Andrew Lang. London: The Medici Society, 1924.
First Edition. Limited to 530 numbered copies, of which 500 were offered for sale. This is copy No. 181.
Illustrated with 20 Colour Plates by William Russell Flint
One of the most attractive early twentieth-century illustrated editions of Homer's Odyssey.
Large quarto, bound in the publisher's original white buckram over bevelled boards, with gilt-lettered leather labels to the spine. Top edge gilt, remaining edges uncut. Illustrated with twenty mounted colour plates after watercolours by William Russell Flint, comprising a colour frontispiece and nineteen further plates, each with its original captioned tissue guard.
Flint completed the watercolours for this edition in 1914, but publication was delayed by the outbreak of the First World War and the work did not finally appear until 1924. The resulting volume is one of the major illustrated books of Flint's early career, combining the classical subject matter for which much of his work is admired with the substantial production values of the Medici Society.
The Butcher and Lang prose translation had first appeared in 1879 and became one of the best-known English prose renderings of the Odyssey. This 1924 edition therefore represents the first edition with Flint's illustrations / first edition thus, rather than the first appearance of the translation.
PROVENANCE
Contemporary presentation inscription to the front free endpaper: “To Baby, With dearest love From Mum. Xmas. 1926.”
The inscription dates from only two years after publication and provides an attractive piece of contemporary ownership history.
CONDITION, COLLATION & COPY NOTES
Publisher's original white buckram with bevelled boards and leather spine labels. Binding generally age-toned and soiled, as commonly encountered with this particularly unforgiving white cloth, with rubbing and bumping to the extremities and wear/fraying at the spine ends.
The leather spine labels show rubbing, edge wear and losses, particularly to the lower label. Boards remain sound and the binding is firm.
Endpapers substantially browned, with the contemporary Christmas 1926 presentation inscription noted above. Some scattered light spotting and marginal toning internally, but the text and illustrated leaves remain generally clean.
Complete with all twenty mounted colour plates by William Russell Flint and their captioned tissue guards. The plates retain particularly good colour and present considerably better than the exterior binding.
Top edge gilt; fore-edge and lower edge uncut.
Please see Photos as part of condition report.
REFERENCES
Gardner, Keith S. Sir William Russell Flint RA PPRWS 1880–1969: A Catalogue Raisonné of the Unsigned Limited Edition Works, 1994, p. 117.
WorldCat: The Odyssey of Homer, Medici Society, London, 1924; OCLC 16411067.
The edition is bibliographically recorded as comprising 530 numbered copies and twenty colour plates after Flint's watercolours.
SYNOPSIS
Homer's Odyssey is one of the foundational works of Western literature and the great surviving epic of homecoming, endurance and identity.
Following the fall of Troy, Odysseus, King of Ithaca, attempts to return to his wife Penelope and son Telemachus. His voyage becomes a ten-year struggle against gods, monsters, temptation and fate.
Among the celebrated episodes are Odysseus's encounter with Polyphemus the Cyclops, the enchantress Circe, his descent into the Underworld, the song of the Sirens, passage between Scylla and Charybdis, and his long detention by the nymph Calypso.
Meanwhile, Ithaca has been overrun by suitors seeking the hand of Penelope, who continue to consume Odysseus's estate while assuming him dead. Returning at last in disguise, Odysseus tests the loyalty of his household before revealing himself and reclaiming his home and kingdom.
Beyond its adventure narrative, the Odyssey explores loyalty, hospitality, intelligence, temptation, identity and the longing for home. Flint's romantic and classically inspired watercolours are exceptionally well suited to its mythological world.
AUTHOR BIO
Samuel Henry Butcher (1850–1910) was an Anglo-Irish classical scholar and academic, educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. He held professorships of Greek at University College London and the University of Edinburgh and became one of the leading British classical scholars of his generation.
Andrew Lang FBA (1844–1912) was a Scottish writer, poet, literary critic, classicist, folklorist and anthropologist. A remarkably prolific author and translator, he is now perhaps most widely remembered for his celebrated series of colour fairy books, beginning with The Blue Fairy Book in 1889.
Butcher and Lang's prose Odyssey, first published in 1879, sought to reproduce the dignity and narrative character of Homer while remaining accessible to the English reader. It became one of the most familiar prose translations of the work in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
ILLUSTRATOR
William Russell Flint
Sir William Russell Flint RA, PRWS (1880–1969) was a Scottish artist, watercolourist and illustrator, particularly celebrated for his figurative and classical subjects.
Born in Edinburgh, Flint trained at the Royal Institution School of Art before moving to London, where he worked as a medical illustrator and subsequently for The Illustrated London News. His exceptional command of watercolour brought him considerable recognition, and he became a member of the Royal Watercolour Society in 1917, later serving as its President from 1936 to 1956. He was elected a Royal Academician in 1933 and knighted in 1947.
Flint produced illustrations for a number of major literary and classical works, and his images for the Odyssey rank among his most substantial early book commissions. The watercolours were completed in 1914, although wartime conditions delayed publication until 1924.
Their combination of classical architecture, Mediterranean landscape, dramatic narrative and idealised figure painting made them particularly well suited to Homer's epic and has helped make this Medici Society edition one of the more collectible illustrated Odysseys of the period.
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