Designs by Mr. R. Bentley, for Six Poems by Mr. T. Gray. GRAY (Thomas).

PERHAPS THE FINEST ENGLISH ILLUSTRATED BOOK OF THE CENTURY

Six full-page engraved plates, engraved vignette on the title, 13 vignettes in the text, and six engraved initials by Muller and Grignon.

4to (in half sheets). [346 x 235 x 21 mm]. [3], 35 ff, [4], 39-55 pp. Bound in contemporary tree calf, the covers with a gilt roll border, rebacked in matching calf, the smooth spine divided into seven panels by gilt fillets and a wave pallet, lettered in the second on a red label, the others with a vase containing flowers, marbled endleaves, red sprinkled edges. (Corners repaired, edges of the boards worn, scrape mark on front).
London: for J. Dodsley, 1775

Without the half-title. A little light dust-soiling but a good copy. Bookplate partly removed and with the signature of T. Lockhart. The six poems are printed and foliated on the recto only. "Odes by Mr. Gray" and the "Explanation of the prints", by Horace Walpole, are printed on both the recto and verso.

First published, in three issues, by Robert Dodsley in 1753. It was reprinted, with additions, by his brother James Dodsley in 1765, 1766, 1775 and 1789. The work is "by far the most sophisticated example of English rococo book-illustration" and "perhaps the finest English illustrated book of the century" (Harthan, The History of the Illustrated Book, pp.154-5). Some of the designs, including the famous frontispiece to "Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard", have Gothic features, while "the others display an eclectic melange of currently fashionable decorative motifs, caryatid-draped frontispieces, rococo scrolls and strapwork, an occasional intrusion of chinoiserie, and nude or lightly-clad figures which simultaneously look back to Poussinesque prototypes and forward to Neo-Classicism". Richard Bentley (1708-1782), the son of the great Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, was a protégé and friend of Horace Walpole, and a chief designer of Strawberry-Hill.

Stock no. ebc7875