Lucrece [The Rape of Lucrece]

Small 4to, 9 1/4 x 6 1/2 inches (235 x 166 mm); xii + 76 + colophon + errata + xiv pp.; printed in black and red ink; pages clean and bright, with no foxing or staining. Colophon and list of corrections to the 1594 quarto text at rear. Original full limp vellum by The Doves Bindery, stamp at foot of lower pastedown, spine lettered in gilt. One of 175 copies on paper with 10 additional copies on vellum. [Tidcombe DP37; Tomkinson, p. 58, no. 46; Ransom, p. 254, no. 46; Cobden-Sanderson, Cosmic Vision, p. 142]. This handsome edition of Shakespeare's narrative poem about the legendary Roman noblewoman Lucretia, is printed from the Text of the First Edition of 1594 and includes a dedication to his patron, the Earl of Southampton, which begins, "The love I dedicate to your Lordship is without end." The dedication is followed by "The Argument", a prose paragraph that summarizes the historical context of the poem, which begins in medias res. The poem contains 265 stanzas in iambic pentameter. It is set in the elegant and famous Doves Typeface and was originally scheduled to appear in 1913, but was repeatedly postponed due to editor Cobden-Sanderson's illness and the disruption of the First World War. During the 16 years that The Doves Press was in business, Cobden-Sanderson managed to produce 40 books bound in 45 volumes. Perfectionism and dedication lead to the creation of some of the most simply elegant books of the 20th century. His version of the ideal book in which the design did not get in the way of the reader's ability to see the author's message proved to be terribly popular, especially after The Doves Press closed in 1916. In his fundamental book Private Presses and Their Books, Will Ransom writes «.if we follow the momentum of the Nineties over the turn of the century we find 1900 ushering in an outstanding figure and a famous achievement, T. J. Cobden-Sanderson and the Doves Press.» (p.35) Based in Hammersmith, London, the Doves Press was founded by T. J. Cobden-Sanderson who was a friend of William Morris and a staunch supporter of Arts and Crafts ideology. The press was established with funds from Cobden-Sanderson's wife Anne and by 1900, Emery Walker was asked to join as a partner. A distinguishing feature of the Dove Press books was a specially-devised typeface, known variously as the Doves Roman, the Doves Press Fount of Type, or simply the Doves Type. Cobden-Sanderson and Walker were in a protracted and bitter dispute involving the rights to the Doves Type in the dissolution of their partnership around 1909. All rights to the Doves Type were to pass to Walker upon the death of Cobden-Sanderson. Instead, as recorded in his Journals, Cobden-Sanderson destroyed all the matrices by throwing them into the Thames River off Hammersmith Bridge in London, a short walk from the Press. His Journals record 170 trips to the Thames, always after dusk, from August 1916 through January 1917. «Yes; yesterday, and the day before, and Tuesday I stood on the bridge at Hammersmith, and, looking towards the Press and the sun setting, threw into the Thames below me the matrices from which had been cast the Doves Press Fount of Type.» [The Journals of Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson, 1879-1922, p. 214] After Cobden-Sanderson's death, Walker sued his widow and received payment for the loss of the rights to the type. Since the beginning of digital type, several designers have reproduced the typeface. In 2013, the designer Robert Green began to create a more polished digital version of the Doves type and in 2015, after searching the riverbed of the Thames near Hammersmith Bridge with help from the Port of London Authority, Green managed to recover 150 pieces of the original type, which helped him to refine the font. [The fight over the Doves: A legendary typeface gets a second life. The Economist, December 19, 2013.]. …