Hyperion: a Romance
( Myles Birket FOSTER, illus. ) LONGFELLOW, Henry Wadsworth
Illustrated with nearly One Hundred Engravings on Wood from Drawings by Birket Foster. [FIRST ILLUSTRATED EDITION.]
FINE COPY: FOSTER'S ILLUSTRATIONS IN SIGNED OLDFIELD BINDING
Published: David Bogue, 1853
Stock code: 51773
Price: £360.00
8vo., First Edition thus, with almost 100 wood-engravings from drawings by Foster in the text; handsomely bound in contemporary full crushed green morocco BY OLDFIELD, sides blocked with quadruple gilt frame borders, back gilt extra with five raised bands, gilt doublures to a floral pattern, gilt edges, chocolate endpapers, a near fine copy.
The binding is signed on front free endpaper verso. So vivid are the scenic descriptions that the work was later used as a guide book to the protagonist's travels through the German landscape. 'Independently of the beauty of the illustrations, it furnishes the first example of a lengthened journey being expressly undertaken to depict from nature all the varied scenes amid which a writer of fiction has laid the incidents of his story. And when it is considered that a tour of between two and three thousand miles had to be performed for this purpose, and that every local illustration was sketched on the spot the book cannot fail to be regarded with some little addititional interest ' (Preface).