The Wedding Songs of Edmund Spenser, being the Prothalamion & the Epithalamion; Printed from the best editions, with Wood-cuts by Ethelbert White..

[Waltham Saint Lawrence, Berkshire]: Golden Cockerel Press, 1923. Limited Edition. Hardcover. Near fine. White, Ethelbert. One of 350 copies (on paper), duodecimo size, 49 pp. Edmund Spenser (1552/3 to 1599) is probably best known for his epic poem "The Faerie Queene", an ode to Elizabeth I. Even today he is considered one of the greatest poets of the English language.

This work, "The Wedding Songs", is a publication uniting two works which were published a year apart, both dealing with love and romance.

According to "Chanticleer", this is the first work of the Press to be illustrated with wood-engravings; however, they go on to state that "[t]here is no great feeling of harmony between the engravings and the type" (p. 16). We find the three wood-engravings charming; Ethelbert White (1892-1972) was a founding member of the English Wood Engraving Society, beginning his career with water colour but being introduced to wood-engraving in 1920.

___DESCRIPTION: Quarter linen, white paper spine label with black lettering, blue paper sides over boards, fore- and bottom edges uncut, the frontispiece one of three wood engravings and the only one in three colours (rust, green and yellow), the other two only in rust; Caslon type on hand-made unbleached Arnold paper, duodecimo size (7 3/8" by 4 1/2"), pagination: [1-8] 9-46, [47, final wood-engraving] [48, colophon] [49, publisher's device]; no. 329 of the 350 copies on paper (per the bibliography; note that the colophon states 320 copies on paper), there were an additional 25 copies on Japanese vellum.

___CONDITION: Volume near fine, with clean boards, perfectly straight corners with a hint of rubbing, a strong, square text block with solid hinges, the interior is clean and bright, and entirely free of prior owner markings; some sunning to the margins of the board edges and some offsetting and light foxing to the endpapers.

___CITATION: Chanticleer no. 14.

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