Love is not quite enough for private press books

Kelmscott books included a copy of William Morris’s own Love is Enough, or the Freeing of Pharamond of 1897, containing two wood engraved plates by Burne-Jones plus elaborately and densely engraved borders, decorations and initials, which sold at £2100 to Marshall; an 1895 Beowulf in the translation made by Morris and A.J. Wyatt, at £1600 to Heritage, and the 1892 Kelmscott edition of Caxton’s translation of The History of Reynard the Fox, which went to Frognal at £1400. All three were in the original limp vellum bindings.

One Cranach item is illustrated right, but there was also a copy of the 1927 Virgil Eclogues which had woodcut illustrations by Maillol and decorative intials cut by Eric Gill. The translator, J.H. Mason’s copy, it sold at £1500 (Kaye). An Ashendene Fairie Queene of 1923 made £950 and a four volume Golden Cockerel Canterbury Tales of 1929-31, illustrated by Eric Gill, made £1900 (Blackwells).

Containing 14 etched plates and numerous text illustrations by Pierre Bonnard, loose in the original wrappers as issued in 1924 by Ambroise Vollard, Octave Mirbeau’s Dingo fetched £1200 (Wolman).

A set of Nos.1-15 of Matrix: a Review for Printers and Bibliophiles which sold for £2400 to a collector was in part a deluxe edition, the last eight volumes being part of the group of one hundred or so examples that contained additional material – prints and broadsides, for example, even a cassette of Stanley Morison talking about Eric Gill. The first two volumes, however, were reprints, as they were in a second example, a complete run of all 18 numbers to date, plus two files of additional related material, which reached £2200.

Ornamented Types: 23 Alphabets from the Foundry of Louis John Pouchée, edited by James Mosley and published in two volumes, including a box of specimens, in 1992-93, made £800 (Barrie Marks).

Bloomsbury Book Auctions, London, March 18
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