Golden Verses from the New Testament with the Illuminations and Miniatures from Celebrated Missals and Books of Hours of the XIV and XV Centuries.
London: John Camden Hotten, [1867]. First edition. Fifty beautifully chromolithographed plates with facing text printed in gold on rectos only. India paper interleaves. Plates attributed to Heinrich Knöfler. Joints a bit tender. Some rubbing to extremities. All edges gilt. Marbled endpapers. Contemporary ink signature of a “Sister Ida” to preliminary blank. Light occasional foxing. A very good, bright copy of an uncommon book. Bound by Bickers and Son in contemporary red morocco with blue-green morocco onlay. Covers and spine stamped in gilt. Spine with five raised bands. Quarto. Item #17094
Heinrich Knöfler (1824 – 1886) was the foremost German lithographer of the period. He began printing professionally in 1850 and became known for his luxuriously chromolithographed books and individual prints. Knöfler, in collaboration with his brother Rudolf, established a reputation for his Catholic artwork and facsimiles of medieval manuscripts. Some of his finest work appeared in an 1861 Catholic Missal (published by Reuss in Vienna), H. von Wiessenbach’s Der Xylographische Farbendruck (1878), and F. von Seeburg’s Der Aegyptische Joseph (also 1878). John Camden Hotten (1832 – 1873) was an author, bookseller, publisher, and journalist. He published works by Swinburne, including his Poems and Ballads (1866), as well as William Blake: A Critical Essays (1868), which was illustrated with hand-colored lithographs. He was also the first publisher to reprint an entire work by Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1867), since Blake’s death. Hotten was a controversial, illustrious figure who also published works like unauthorized editions of Twain and Tennyson and (possibly) operated a small circulating library of pornography.
Not mentioned in McLean. OCLC records six physical copies, only two in North America (University of Toronto and the Huntington). Burch, R.M. and William Gamble. Colour Printing and Color Printers (1911), pp. 164-7. Oxford DNB.
Price: $950.00