Novum Testamentum. Juxta Exemplar Millianum. Typis Joannis Baskerville.

  • (Bible. New Testament. Greek)
  • Oxonii [Oxford]: E Typographeo Clarendoniano 1763
  • Gaskell Add. 2; ESTC T94889; D&M 4756.

£600

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SKU: 2842 Category: Tags: , ,

Description

8vo, pp. [iv], 676. Nineteenth-century dark purple straight-grained morocco, boards bordered with a gilt roll and blind rules enclosing a gilt frame and a central gilt monogram with heraldic crest, spine divided by double raised bands, second and fourth compartments gilt-lettered direct, others with a gilt border of double rules connecting cornerpieces, brown chalked endpapers, edges gilt. Lightly toned and spotted. Extremities a bit rubbed, spine showing some creasing and the gilt slightly darkened. Ownership inscription of Alfred Baldwin, Trinity College, to title-page, gilt monogram ‘CY’ below a stag’s head charged with four annulets to boards.

Notes

An attractive copy. In 1758 Baskerville proposed the casting of a new set of Greek types to the Oxford University Press, and they ordered 2000 copies of this octavo New Testament (plus 500 in quarto) to be printed with the resulting type - which ended up being its only use. Negative critical reception may have contributed to its abandonment, but Baskerville's Greek face has recently been reassessed by Gerry Leonidas as an important predecessor of more modern types (if perhaps not quite as elegant as that used by the Foulis press) that had fallen afoul of an arbitrary typographic orthodoxy.
The gilt monogram on this copy is of Charles Yonge (1781-1830), assistant master at Eton; it is recorded as being used on books given by him as leaving gifts (for which he often chose Baskerville editions).

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