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BARBER, Richard (Trans by)

Bestiary

Bestiary

London: The Folio Society, 1992

Illustrated by

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Bestiary, being an English version of the Bodleian Library, Oxford M.S. Bodley 764, with all the original miniatures reproduced in facsimile. Translated and introduced by Richard Barber. London: The Folio Society, 1992. First printing thus. 275 × 176 × 21 mm. Pp. [1–6] 7–205 [206–208]. Type: Monophoto Photina with title lettering drawn by Sebastian Carter. Typeset by Selwood Systems, printed and bound by Butler and Tanner. Quarter dark blue buckram, cream paper boards decorated in colour; dark blue endleaves. Dark blue slip case. 

There are 135 reproductions of illuminations printed in the text, with two repeated on the boards. In addition, there is a large illuminated capital ‘B’ on the title-page, also used on page 23. The illustrations are placed in exactly the same positions on the page as they are in the original manuscript, which necessitated considerable juggling of the text to make it fill the spaces between them. Two hundred sets of unbound sheets were supplied by the Society to Designer Bookbinders, who had chosen this work for their 1993 competition. A trade impression was published by Boydell and Brewer.

Near-fine copy with pages clean, bright and tightly bound. In like slipcase with a little shelf-wear and a lightly bumped corner to front.

Bestiaries are particularly characteristic of medieval England, and give a unique insight into the medieval mind. Richly illuminated and lavishly produced, they were luxury objects for noble families. Their three-fold purpose wasto provide a natural history of birds, beasts and fishes, to draw moral examples from animal behaviour (the industrious bee, the stubborn ass), and to reveal a mystical meaning -the phoenix, for instance, as a symbol of Christ's resurrection. The MS. Bodley 764 Bestiary was initially produced around the middle of the thirteenth century and herewith reproduced for the first time.

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