Ballads and Songs of Brittany. By Tom Taylor. Translated from the "Barsaz-Breiz" of Vicomte Hersart de la Villemarqué. With Some of the Original Melodies Harmonized by Mrs. Tom Taylor...
1865. London and Cambridge: Macmillan and Co., 1865.
Square 8vo, xxxiv, 240 pp. Original brown cloth, backstrip lettered & ruled in gilt, covers ruled in blind. Frontispiece & title-page vignette engraved on wood by C. H. Jeens after sketches by Joseph James Jacques Tissot; eight additional wood-engraved plates. Rubbed along edges; W. H. Smith embossed stamp on front free endpaper; offsetting from frontispiece onto title-page; but a sound copy.
§ First edition, evidently in a remainder binding. (The first binding had a gilt-stamped knight on the front cover.) Tom Taylor (1817-1880) was successful in several fields, including playwriting, government work, and journalism; he was editor of Punch for six years before his death. These translations of the mysterious and romantic songs of medieval Brittany are handsomely illustrated by a panoply of important Victorian artists including Tissot, Tenniel, Browne, Millais, Keene, etc. The pieces are well annotated; and Taylor's wife, a well-known composer, contributes an appendix of musical settings. Fredeman 95:47. Forrest Reid, p. 131. Gleeson White, p. 127. Item #5913
Price: $200.00