THE POETICAL WORKS (FORE-EDGE PAINTINGS). MILTON, JOHN Bindings - 19th century,Fore-Edge Paintings,Illustrated Books - Engravings,Poetry

207 x 135 mm. (8 1/8 x 5 5/8"). Two volumes. With a memoir and critical remarks by James Montgomery. Pleasing contemporary burgundy pebble-grain morocco, gilt, covers with graceful frame of cresting roll accented with lancets, large lyre centerpiece with leafy flourishes and small birds, raised bands, spine compartments densely gilt, gilt lettering, gilt turn-ins, all edges gilt. WITH LOVELY FORE-EDGE PAINTINGS BY THE "DOVER PAINTER," one of Milton's cottage at Chalfont, and the other of St. Giles Church, Cripplegate. With decorative engraved initials and 95 engraved vignettes after drawings by William Harvey. Weber, "Annotated Dictionary of Fore-edge Painting Artists & Binders," pp. 98-103. Muir, "Victorian Illustrated Books," p. 28. Spines gently and evenly sunned, joints and extremities a little rubbed, one margin with faint paint trail from fore-edge painter's brush, other trivial imperfections, but A VERY APPEALING COPY, internally clean and fresh, in solid bindings with bright gilt, and the fore-edge paintings especially well preserved. This copy of Milton's collected poems is very attractively illustrated inside and out, with an extremely skillful painting by a famous artist adorning each of the fore edges. Designed by William Harvey (1796-1866), who Muir tells us was "the longest lived and most important of Bewick's pupils," the engravings here range from charming figural initials to writhing residents of Hell in their smoky abyss to gentle-faced angels bathed in beams of light. The fore-edge paintings are recognizable as the work of the so-called "Dover Painter," the name given by Jeff Weber to the artist who produced very high quality painted fore edges in the 1920s and 1930s for the famous London bookseller Marks & Company. These two depict Milton's cottage and his final resting place, St. Giles' Church in London. The cottage is depicted in an idyllic scene of Milton's time, with aproned peasants milling about the ivy-covered building under the shade of the trees that frame the scene. The other painting shows a lively urban street: the church's venerable structure is flanked by bustling shops visited by gentlemen with fashionable canes, while the smoke from the chimneys trails upward into the cloudy sky. These clouds, and the trees surrounding the cottage, are particularly demonstrative of our artist's distinctive style of applying dabs of paint, a technique that almost suggests a quasi-pointillism. Taken together, the substantial content, lovely contemporary red morocco bindings, and finely executed and well-preserved fore-edge paintings combine to make up a set of considerably seductive appeal.