Fifteen Roses; Being Our Lady's Rosary in Verse
Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1926. Limited edition. Folio (12 1/8 inches tall), original illustrated paper boards, gray cloth spine, uncut, original dust wrapper. Very minor edge-wear to boards and wrapper. About-Fine. Item #1271
"MAIDEN MOST MEEK AND HEAVENLY QUEEN / ROSES, LO, I HAVE CULLED FIFTEEN"
Limited edition, one of only 100 copies, of a Rosary in Verse—"Sung by E. Hamilton Moore" and "Pictured by Gabriel Pippet"—a superb folio production complete with the original illustrated dust wrapper.
Printed under the supervision of Bernard H. Newdigate at the Shakespeare Head Press. Educated at Stonyhurst, Newdigate first worked for his father’s Arden Press, before becoming printer to the Shakespeare Head Press in 1920—in partnership with the publisher Basil Blackwell. The Shakespeare Head became a leading English producer of privately-printed books for a 20-year period during which the Shakespeare Head was "the most mature and sophisticated of the private presses" (Colin Franklin)
With a title page printed in red-and-black and illustrated by Gabriel Pippet with 15 wood-engravings. An additional engraving of the Crucifixion appears on the front board and the dust wrapper. Prefaced with The Printer to the Reader, a brief note initialed by Newdigate: "Both in language and in fancy Miss Hamilton Moore's lines are tenderly reminiscent of an age in which the mysteries of our faith and the truths of the Christian religion were handled more lightly than in our own. Gabriel Pippet's art, too, speaks the language of the faith in which it was nurtured." Pippet's large and dramatic illustrations preceded by several years his smaller, but equally exquisite, woodcuts for the Pear Tree Press's A Little Rosary (1930). Numbered copy #60 in ink on the limitation page.
Price: $300.00