From the library of an Old Etonian
TERENCE. Publii Terentii Afri Comoediæ. Birmingham: John Baskerville. 1772.
Large 12mo. Contemporary mottled sheep, boards with gilt borders, turn-ins, and double fillets in a panel design, flat spine rebacked preserving much of the original gilt spine, lacking lettering piece, marbled endpapers; pp. [5] 4-307, [1], woodcut ornament to title, bound without initial blank; extremities slightly worn; some light spotting and toning, light damp staining to lower margins, but generally very good; near contemporary armorial bookplate of Marmaduke Dawnay to front pastedown and his ink stamp to verso of title (see below); “E. dono I. Davies”, “Eton”, and some annotations in ink and pencil (including Julius Caesar’s “On the poetry of Terence”), most likely in Dawnay’s hand, to front free endpapers and to p. 104, occasional marginal markings in pencil.
First Baskerville edition of the Comedies of Terence.
John Baskerville (1707-1775) was an innovative type designer and printer, whose elegant work was highly regarded by Benjamin Franklin. The Baskerville typeface, a transitional serif, was designed as a refinement of earlier old-style typefaces such as Caslon.
The volume contains Terence’s six plays – “Andria”, “Eunchus”, “Heauton timorumenos”, “Adelphoe”, “Phormio”, and “Hecyra” – in the original Latin. In the same year, Baskerville issued another edition of the comedies of Terence in quarto format (see Gaskell 46).
Provenance: From the library of Marmaduke Langley Dawnay (1777-1851), younger son of John Dawnay (1728-1780), 4th Viscount Downe and Whig politician, and Laura Burton. Educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, Dawnay appears to have studied this copy of Terence during his time at Eton.
Gaskell 47; ESTC T137488.
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