Leonora Bound with the Fables : Of John Dryden, Ornamented with Engravings From the Pencil of the Right Hon. Lady Diana Beauclerc

London: Printed for W. Miller; Printed by T. Bensley, 1796-01-01. Hardcover. Very Good. 2 Volumes bound in one. Fine binding. Folio. viii, 35 pages, 5 pl., 4 vignettes; Fables of Dryden, 1797 printing., 4, xviii, 241p, 9 pl, 15 head and tail vignettes. Bound in modern morocco leather. Gilt lettering, gilt ruled and embossed spine. 5 raised bands. Marbled endpages. Toning to pages verso plates. Light toning. Light tanning to pages. Clean, unmarked pages. ESTC T128162; Lowndes, 678. <br><br> Gottfried August Burger was a German poet. His ballads were very popular in Germany. His most noted ballad, Lenore, had a profound effect on the development of Romantic literature throughout Europe and a strong influence on the English ballad-writing revival of the 1790s. <br> Lady Diana Beauclerk (nee Lady Diana Spencer), was an English noblewoman and artist. During those years of her second marriage, Lady Diana's artistic talents became particularly evident: she practiced portraiture, and her enormous output of small drawings of fat cupids entangled in branches of grapes and little girls wearing mob caps gave place to larger and more ambitious groups of peasantry introduced into landscaped backgrounds. She worked chiefly in pen and ink, pastel, and watercolor. In 1796 she illustrated the English translation of G. A. Burger's ballad Leonora and in 1797 The Fables of John Dryden; in both cases her illustrations were engraved mostly by Francesco Bartolozzi. (DNB) The esteemed and highly sought-after engraver Francesco Bartolozzi was selected to translate her drawings to copperplates attests to her high standing. Only two books were published accompanied by her illustrations, both engraved by Bartolozzi and published by Bensley: Spencerss translation of Lenore, 1796 and the Fables of John Dryden in 1797. <br> The golden Preface [of Dryden's Fables, included in this edition] describes his delighted progress from Homer to Ovid, from Ovid to Chaucer, and from Chaucer to Boccaccio, the volume constantly swelling in his hands; I have built a house, he concludes, where I intended but a lodge Dryden's search for materials was far and wide. He plundered medieval as well as ancient story; he went to the greatest tellers of tales wherever they were, whether they were Greek, Roman, Italian, or English The chime of Dryden's verse was never done. (Van Doren, 214-15)