Authors starting with H from The Book Block

London W. Smith for John Scott & Thomas Ostell, 1803. Squarish, small 4to., original gray publisher's boards with a printed paper label: Holbein's Dance of Death with Fifty Plates. Twelve Shillings. Rebacked, a few plates guarded, slight widespread spotting. RARE IN THIS STATE.As to the plates themselves, there are fifty, as the cover label states (the title-page calls for 46), and they differ in number slightly from another edition of the same year printed by S. Gosnell for Scott and... more information

London S. Gosnell, 1803. Sm. 4to., contemporary paneled calf with blind decorated sides and spine, which has been rebacked much earlier; red morocco label, all edges stained red. Occasional foxing, mainly to the beginning and end; a handsome, well-printed copy.The 46 Dance of Death plates are within separately engraved borders in four different designs, three of which are copied with slight variations from the Diepenbeke borders to W. Hollar's plates. As to the plates themselves, 30 are copie... more information

London W. Smith for John Scott, 1803. Small 4to., contemporary red straight grain morocco, expertly rebacked, with a half-inch wide decorated border surrounding a blind-tooled border; spine with four raised bands and elaborate decorative gilt tooling. A.e.g.The work contains a total of fifty plates of which 46 are devoted to the Dance of Death. The plates are printed without the decorative borders found in copies printed by S. Gosnell for John Scott the same year. In this copy, they are interleav... more information

London William Charlton Wright, 1825. 8vo., Publisher's printed boards, rubbed and hand soiled, with a calf spine; internally, quite nice.First edition of what purports to be the work of John Bewick but probably is not. As Aldred Warthin (The Physician of the Dance of Death. pp. 81-82) writes: "The cuts with several exceptions are imitations of the original Holbein, but are absurdly modernized; both the costumes and the properties are represented in the contemporary style...[they] have s... more information

London J. Coxhead, 1816. Publisher's printed gray boards, copy set within decorative borders; spine renewed with matching paper.Based upon Holbein's original 15th century designs, Wenceslaus Hollar, the Bohemian etcher born in Prague in 1607 created copper plates for his own Dance of Death. In 1647 an edition of 30 copperplates was brought out in London; another edition from these plates was published in 1651. The plates then disappeared from sight until the late 18th-early 19th centuries... more information

New York Museum of Modern Art, 1957. Oblong folio in blue paper wrappers with a two-color label on the upper cover; laid into a blue-paper-covered board folder with another label. A VERY FINE copy; just some sunning to the spine of the folder (which is generally found in disrepair or lacking altogether)One of 975 copies for sale SIGNED by Baskin at whose Gehenna Press it was printed for The Museum of Modern Art. The type is Perpetua and the six boxwood engravings and lone woodcut have been pulled... more information

London Printed for A. Millar, 1749. Six vols. 8vo. (6 7/16 x 3 15/16 inches), handsomely rebound in three-quarter acid calf over boards covered with 18th century marbled paper;the books have hand sewn blue-and-white matching headbands. Spines with five raised bands and black morocco labels; all edges sprinkled.FIRST EDITION with the errata leaf in Volume I and with all the cancels called for by Rothschild; Volume V: N8 is an unsigned cancel. It contains an ADDITIONAL CANCEL Overlooked in Rothschild; viz.... more information

Leipzig Insel-Verlag, N.d.. 8vo. (7 x 5 inches), full crushed tan goatskin with a pair of double gilt fillet borders, the innermost with corner flourishes. In the center is a gilt medallion portrait of Holbein; spine with four raised bands and gilt decoration and titling. Slightlt rubbed extremities but a very solid, attractive binding by Walter Tiemann.The work is comprised of the forty woodcuts made for the first Holbein edition, printed in Lyon: Les Simulachres & histoirees faces de la Mor... more information

Basel Chez Maehli-Lamy, 1843. 8vo., three-quarter green cloth over marbled boards, with the title stamped in gilt on the spine, and bookplate of Edward Cheney on front pastedown. This bilingual edition begins with a short history of the subject, followed by a series of woodcuts portraying the usual array of humankind confronting Death personified. A number of the plates bear the initials GS along with a rendering of a knife to signify the name of the wood cutter, George Scharffenberg, who first cut these i... more information

Antwerp (Gilles Coppens), 1557 [Colophon 1560]. Tall 4to. (12 1/2 x 8 3/4 inches), contemporary vellum with ties (renewed), and new endleaves; title lettered on the spine. First Spanish edition. Notwithstanding the presence of the woodcut title-page from the Latin edition and one leaf substituted [A6] from the Italian edition, the text and collation conforms to the Fairfax Murray copy [No. 187] of the first Spanish edition. That Coppens also published editions in French, German, Italian and Latin may acc... more information