[Richard Beresford, signed limitation, with second signature inscribing the book to 'Diana'.] Glist'ring Phaeton. [A verse translation of the French source of Shakespeare's Richard II, 'Histoire du Roy d'Angleterre Richard'.]

Author: 
Richard Beresford [William Shakespeare, 'Richard II'; 'Histoire du Roy d'Angleterre Richard']
Publication details: 
'Published by the Morija Printing Works & sold by the Constantia Booksellers Johannesburg: 1945'.
£250.00
SKU: 22528

[4] + 78 + [1]pp, 8vo. In printed wraps. Internally in fair condition, on lightly discoloured paper, in worn and stained wraps. Verse translation of the French source of Shakespeare's Richard II, 'Histoire du Roy Angleterre Richard'. Inscribed in ink on a fly-leaf: 'Diana | from Richard | Christmas 1945.' Signed again on final colophon page, this time in pencil, 'Richard Beresford | Christmas Day | 45.' Colophon reads: 'Of the five hundred copies of this edition, printed at the press of the publishers, fifty copies on special paper have been numbered & signed by the author.' Tastefully printed, in consciously old-fashioned style, with pseudo-seventeenth-century title-page. Dedicated to the author's brother 'John Beresford, C.B.E. | Civil Servant and Man of Letters | instantaneously killed by a bomb which fell upon His Majesty's Treasury, Whitehall, during an aerial attack on London on the 17th of October 1940.' The rest of the dedication discusses the brother's editing of the Woodforde Diary. The author's preface, dated from 'Johannesburg | South Africa | 1942-45', ends: 'Shakespeare and minstrelsy from Chaucer to the Sitwells delight me, so that I send out this small book hopefully, not being insensitive enough in my sixty-fourth year to say with the excellent Peacham in his Compleat Gentleman: "I care not, I have pleased myselfe."' Uncommon: only four copies on COPAC.