Dante Alighieri; Henry Francis Cary [trans.]

The Vision; or Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise [John Taylor Coleridge's Copy] [Three Volume Set]

London: John Taylor, 1831. Very Good. Item #47021

London: Printed for John Taylor, 1831. Third Edition, with the Life of Dante, Notes and an Index. Three small octavo (17.5cm) volumes; contemporary crimson straight-grained gilt-tooled morocco, gilt spine in six compartments repeating a fleur-de-lis motif with green gilt spine labels, top edges gilt, marbled endpapers. Light wear to leather at corners and spine edges, spines uniformly sunned scattered foxing to text blocks, else a Very Good, bright and sound set.

Ownership signature to front flyleaf of each volume of J.T. Coleridge (1790-1876), at Heath's Court, Oct. 14, 1841. John Taylor Coleridge, an English judge, was nephew of poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, champion of this translation, and cousin (and later also brother-in-law) of novelist Sara Coleridge.

A distinguished set of Dante's Divine Comedy, first translated and published into blank verse by Henry Francis Cary in 1814 at his own expense, his 1805 translation of the Inferno having been a commercial failure. The Vision, as it was titled, appeared to very little notice until Samuel Taylor Coleridge himself publicly praised the work and an article was read about its literary merits at the Royal Institution. A second edition appeared in 1819. A total of four editions were brought out in the translator's lifetime.

Price: $2,500.00