388d Tasso, Torquato. (1544-1595); trans. Edward Fairfax. (d. 1635) Godfrey Of Bovlogne: Or The Recouerie of Iervsalem. Done into English Heroicall verse, by Edward Fairefax Gent.

London: Ar. Hatfield, for I. Jaggard and M. Lownes, 1600

$7,500

Small folio, 9.5 x 6.5 in. First edition of the metrical translation by Edward Fairfax. A4; B-Z6; Aa-Kk6; Ll4. This copy boasts a distinguished provenance, having passed through the collections of George Grenville (signature at the top of the title page), and Frederick Locker-Lampson (bookplate inside the front board). Grenville (1712-1770), Prime Minister of Great Britain (1763-1765) oversaw the enactment of the Stamp Act and argued that the sedition in the colonies was symptomatic of the division in the House of Commons. Locker-Lampson (1821-1895) a noted poet and book collector amassed perhaps his century’s finest collections of Elizabethan literature at his Sussex home, Rowfant. A catalogue of the library, Rowfant Library, was completed in 1886, and an appendix was added after his death (1900). This large copy is bound in nineteenth century full brown calf, with gilt edges, elaborate dentelles, and housed in a quarter brown morocco slipcase. The binding has been rebacked. This copy has been washed and pressed circa 1820, and consequently the leaves are mostly free of browning and staining.

This first complete translation of Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata follows Richard Carew’s translation of the portion of the poem that was first printed in 1594. The DNB highly commends this translation which “in refinement and poetic instinct […] far surpasses not only Carew but the translators of later times.” So valued, in fact, was this translation that King James I valued it above all other English poetry and Charles I found solace and contentment in Fairfax’s verse rendering during his period of confinement. Fairfax spent the better part of his life in scholarly retirement and produced this work, twelve eclogues, and an account of the bewitching of his two daughters.

STC 23698; Langland to Wither p. 78; Huntington, p. 135; Clawson, no. 815