(VERY RARE) Publ. Virgilii Maronis Bucolica & Georgica post optimas editiones nunc primum emendatata : notis ac scholiis selectissimis varionum illustrata. Virgil (Virgilii)

Virgil's Bucolics and Georgics. After the best editions now first revised/illustrated with notes and select notes of various authors. ***VERY RARE. Only a handful of print editions are held by institutions around the world, no copy available for sale, and no auction record I could find of a sale of this edition. Overall Condition: FAIR to Good Antiquarian. Lacking backstrip. PROVENANCE: From the Virgil Collection of Craig Kallendorf (1954 - 2023), who owned the largest private collection of antiquarian Virgil works (1,150 editions, not including Incunable books) in the world. Only a handful of prominent institutions like the British Library had larger collections. Eighth-nine of the books in his collection were the only known surviving copies, 71 only had one other known copy. He worked closely with Princeton University in helping to assemble, supplement and catalog its Junius Spencer Morgan Virgil collection. Craig Kallendorf was Professor of English and Classics at Texas A&M University. He was the author or editor of 27 books and more than 170 articles, book chapters, and reference work entries. Among Kallendorf's groundbreaking monographs on the Virgilian tradition, special note might be made of his Virgil and the Myth of Venice: Books and Readers in the Italian Renaissance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), which shows how the wide reading of the Aeneid, accessed in both Latin and Italian editions, contributed to Venetian ideology and the so-called "myth of Venice." With its publication, according to reviewer Diana Robin (Renaissance Quarterly, 55.4 [2002], p. 1394), Kallendorf is to be recognized as "the leading authority on the Virgilian tradition in early modern print culture in Italy." ABOUT THE BOOK Published in 1684 by Johannis (Possibly "Johannes") Gay in London. Latin text. Rebound in patterned paper covered boards. All edges stained red. Small octavo of duodecimo size, 5.5" x 4", 262 pp. Woodcut printer device on title page. Decorated initials. Woodcut tail piece at end of both the Bucolics and Georgics. Collated and complete minus blank flyleaves. CONDITION REPORT: Fair to Good - missing backstrip. Refreshed endpapers. The cardboard stock spine is intact but missing its surface level paper covering. Chipping to paper covers. Firm hinges and joints, square spine, tight pages. Paper loss to top left corner of title page with the loss of the "V" in Virgil. Stains on both covers. Bump to head of front cover. Hinge over opened between FFEP and title page. Rubbed extremities. Grubby endpapers and title page. Occasional light foxing. Four leaves with large water dampening stain to lower half of pages. Some smudges, some light creasing, no bent page corners (scarce). Former owner writing in pencil on FFEP verso. Ink inscriptions on front pastedown, FFEP (dated 1835), title page and page 3. A few instances of very brief margin writing or a mark or small area with an underlined word or two in ink. Craig Kallendorf ex libris sticker on FFEP. Overall, a VERY RARE 17th century edition of Virgil's Bucolics and Georgics in Latin. Only a handful of copies are held by institutions. There is no record of a sale via auction via Rare Book Hub.