The Faerie Queen: The Shepheards Calendar: Together with the Other Works of England's Arch-Poët, Edm. Spenser: Collected into one Volume, and carefully corrected. by Spenser, Edmund - 1611

Folio (10 x 7 ins. London: Printed by H. L. for Mathew Lownes, 1611. Folio (10 x 7 ins.), paginating thus: (Faerie Queen) [i-xvi], 363, [3, inc. final blank]; (Shepheards Calendar) [x], 56, (2, blank); (Prosopopoia) 16; (Colin Clout) [26]; (Prothalamion) [4]; (Amoretti) [16]; (Epithalamion) [6]; (Foure Hymnes) [16]; (Daphnaida) [10]; (Complaints) [12]; (The Teares of the Muses) [12]; (Virgils Gnat) (20); (The Ruines of Rome) [6]; (Muiopotmos) [10]; (Visions of the Worlds Vanitie) [6]; (The Visions of Petrarch) [2] pp. General title within woodcut border (McKerrow & Ferguson 212), twelve woodcut illustrations and ornamental borders, decorative woodcut head- and tail-pieces and initials. (The woodcuts in The Shepheards Calender were used in all the earlier separate editions.) A bright, clean copy, handsomely bound in early 20th century crushed red morocco paneled in gilt and blind, inner dentelles, all edges gilt; skillfully rebacked, a few scuffs to the boards. Bookplates of Edward N. Crane and of John L Clawson (1865-1933) of Buffalo, NY, whose collection of Elizabethan literature was considered the greatest of its time. § First collected edition of Spenser’s works and first folio edition, second (1615?) issue, with the title to The Second Part of the Faerie Queene beginning with signature R, dated 1613 and the colophon dated “16012” [sic]. With the Prosopopoia. Or Mother Hubberds Tale, consisting of a single gathering A of eight leaves and dated 1612 on the title, not found in the first issue. "The first modern English poet to achieve major stature, Spenser demonstrated with his fluency in many meters and stanzaic forms that English was at least the equal to any other language as a vehicle of great poetry. While his poetry, particularly The Faerie Queene, looks backward as the culmination of the allegorical verse tradition of the Pearl Poet, Langland, and Chaucer, he has influenced with his fertile imagination and especially his sensuous imagery and melodic language nearly every important English poet who followed him." Grolier, Langland to Wither, 239. Johnson 19. Pforzheimer 973. ESTC S123122.