Kelmscott Press] THE SHEPHEARDES CALENDER: CONTEYNING TWELVE AEGLOGUES, PROPORTIONABLE TO THE TWELVE MONETHES by Spenser, Edmund | illustrated by Arthur Gaskin - 1896

Hammersmith: Kelmscott Press, 1896. Hard Cover. Arthur Gaskin. Small quarto. [8], 1-98, [8 blank] pp. Limited Edition, one of 225 copies on paper. Holland-backed boards titled in black on the front board; printed in red and black in Morris's Golden type; full-page woodcut after drawings by Gaskin fronting each of the twelve months along with 10-line floriated initial; leather bookplate of Estelle Doheny on the front pastedown; light offsetting from it to the front free endpaper; foxing to the spine and a bit to the top-edge of the textblock; very little foxing in the text. With 225 copies printed on paper, this is among the smaller limitations that the Press issued. Gordon Ray suggests that Gaskin's “twelve designs are perhaps the most successful of Kelmscott Press illustrations”; an assertion with which Colin Franklin agrees. A very nice copy of an uncommon Kelmscott title. Now housed in a custom clamshell box. Peterson A44; Ray 259; Franklin p.43.