Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Le Morte Darthur, Vol. 2: The Original Edition of William Caxton, Now Reprinted and Edited; Introduction
Neither copy has a title.1 According to Mr. Blades' treatise on Caxton's Typography, the type is No. The volume is 1 113 inches high and 8 inches broad. The lines are all 4-3 inches long. Thirty eight lines make generally a full page, but pages occur with a few lines less, and some with thirty-nine lines. Neither folios nor catchwords are given. Books and chapters commence with woodcut initials, the former with ornamental ones, five lines high; the latter with plain ones, three lines high.2 The first leaf of the book is blank. Caxton's preface commences on the second recto, with a three-line woodcut initial. This preface consists of two paragraphs, and finishes on signature iiij. On the verso the table of contents, or rubrysshe, as Caxton styles it, begins, and runs without interruption through thirty four pages, terminating on the eighteenth verso. The history itself commences on signature a, with an ornamental five-line woodcut initial. The leaves are distinguished by three sets of alphabets, each in eights, intended merely as a direction to the binders, only half of each sheet being marked, in the beginning, alternately, one page with a signature and one without, afterwards four leaves with signatures and four without, these latter being the halves of the signed sheets. In the first alphabet, after z, follows 85, also in eights. The second alphabet concludes with Z, and then follow aa, bb, &c., to ee, in eights, but ee has only six leaves, as the book finishes on the verso of cc R iij is misprinted for sig. S iij, and S ij for T 13° The Althorp copy is beautifully bound in olive morocco by Lewis.
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