Books

First Fairfax-Muckley edition, one of 100 large-paper copies on handmade paper, in a bright example of the original cloth. The edition was intended as a stylistic companion to Dent's edition of Le Morte d'Arthur (1894-95), illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley, and as a competitor to the George Allen edition of The Faerie Queene, illustrated by Walter Crane and published the same year. Fairfax-Muckley (1862-1926) was an influential leader of the arts and crafts "Birmingham School", having studied painting and drawing at the Birmingham School of Art in the early 1880s. A 1901 profile by the Society of Designers declares that he "has always had a strong bent towards the straightforward methods of the early painters... as witness the beautiful designs for his well-known edition of the 'Faerie Queene,' which fully express his natural admiration of the early Italian work" (p. 171). Dent commissioned Beardsley and Fairfax-Muckley to illustrate his deluxe arts and crafts publications in an effort to emulate the success of the Kelmscott Press. This edition also comprised a further 1,200 copies on ordinary paper. Three volumes, large octavo. Original red cloth over bevelled boards, covers lettered and decorated in gilt, top edges gilt, others uncut, largely unopened, red silk bookmarkers. Woodcut frontispieces and title pages, 22 woodcut illustrations (several double-page), woodcut initials, head- and tailpieces. Extremities rubbed, bookmarkers detached and loosely inserted in vols. I and III, lacking in vol. II, sporadic and mainly marginal faint toning to contents, occasional marks, but generally bright and clean. A very good set. Society of Designers, 'A Designer of the Birmingham School', The Artist: An Illustrated Monthly Record of Arts, Crafts and Industries, 1901.

The Faerie Queene is a celebrated epic poem by Edmund Spenser, first published in 1590. The poem is an allegory praising Queen Elizabeth I and reflecting the values and ideologies of Elizabethan England. It is one of the longest poems in the English language and is renowned for its richly imaginative narrative and moral allegory.