The WORKS of JOHN DRYDEN

Item Details

Edinburgh, Printed For Archibald Constable and Co. Edinburgh; and Hurst, Robinson and Co. London, 1821, Half Leather

Second Edition, Very Good

Complete in eighteen volumes. Octavo. Tan calf over boards with double gilt ruled covers. Ornate gilt tooled spines with five raised bands and two contrasting labels. Marbled end papers and page edges. Volume I with portrait frontispiece of Dryden engraved by W.H. Lizars. Some foxing to frontispiece and title page, Vol I, otherwise very good.

Volume VI includes a fold out plate "The Solemn Mock Procession of the POPE Cardinals, Jesuits, Friars Etc. Through the CITY OF LONDON November 17th 1679." with a half width separation along one of the folds.  The plate represents a "Satire on the Popish Plot; with an engraving after Francis Barlow showing three lines of a Whig mock procession ending with the Pope being burnt in effigy before Temple Bar" British Museum online catalogue, description.

Each volume with the bookplate of Florence de Wolfe Sampson by E.D. French (who also engraved the Grolier Club's own bookplate as well as bookplates for many of its members). 

John Dryden (1631-1700) was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who was appointed England's first Poet Laureate in 1668. He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden. - wikipedia.