Epithalamion by Edmund Spenser. With Certain Imaginative Drawings by George Wharton Edwards

New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1895. Limited edition, one of 450 copies printed by the DeVinne Press, of Edmund Spenser's ode to his bride Elizabeth Boyle, first published in 1595: "Set all your things in seemely good aray / Fit for so joyfull day, / The joyfulst day that ever sunne did see." The poem's twenty-four stanzas correspond to the hours of the wedding day, as Spenser describes the morning's preparations, the ceremony, the feast, and the final "safety of our joy" after nightfall. The decorative Art Nouveau binding and illustrations, informed by English private press book design, are the work of American painter George Wharton Edwards: "From cover to cover the book carries out one artistic scheme with the text, presenting a unique conception which is original with the artist" (Dodd, Mead & Company.) This edition of 450 copies was issued alongside a signed limited edition of 25 copies on vellum. Provenance: Lee D. Witkin, the influential New York gallerist who created the modern market for fine art photography before his early death from AIDS in 1984. A near-fine copy. Single volume, measuring 8.75 x 5.25: [60]. Original full pictorial vellum stamped in gilt and green; green and blue marbled endpapers. Title page printed in red and black; decorative borders and illustrations on every page. Bookseller label of Thos. V. Paul, Philadelphia, to front pastedown; penciled bookseller note to rear endpaper, "from library estate of Lee D. Witkin." With: original pale green pictorial cardboard box stamped in gilt, lined in coated white paper, original silk lifting ribbon. Vellum boards slightly bowed; volume no longer fits neatly in the publisher's box. Box rubbed and partly split at joint.