Furniture Store's Bill
A printed and handwritten bill to Mrs Hamilton Davies from Thomas Lane and Company. This was a furniture store with branches at 52-56 Warwick Street and 1 Bedford Street, Leamington Spa. The bill is dated ...
Gasparo Contarini, The commonwealth and government of Venice, 1599 - binding
A hard-wearing vellum binding of Shakespeare's time.
This volume is in its original binding of flexible vellum, with a hand-sewn spine. Vellum (a kind of leather from very young, still-born, or foetal ...
Gasparo Contarini, The commonwealth and government of Venice, 1599 - printer's ornament, p. 98, N4v.
A woodcut as decoration.
Woodcuts used to ornament Elizabethan texts were frequently ornate and often symbolic of ideas contained within the text with which they are associated. The cherubs with lute ...
Gasparo Contarini, The commonwealth and government of Venice, 1599 - title page.
A handbook on Venice for Shakespeare's contemporaries.
In 1599 Sir Lewis Lewkenor translated from the Italian Gaspar Contarini’s Della Republica et Magistrati de Venetia. This was the first book ...
Geoffrey Chaucer, Workes, 1602 - binding in fine leather
A ‘morocco’ binding chosen by a ‘collector’.
The scarlet goatskin and gold tooling of this binding, created by Francis Bedford, was finished in the late nineteenth-century ...
Geoffrey Chaucer, Workes, 1602 - title page, p.a1r
A Shakespeare source in England’s mediaeval poetry.
Geoffrey Chaucer’s works, written in the time of Richard II, at the end of the 13th century, were known and admired by Elizabethan contemporaries ...
George Eliot, Adam Bede decorative binding.
Illustrated edition by Gordon Browne. Publisher unknown. Printed by W and R Chambers Ltd London and Edinburgh.
George Eliot (born Mary Ann Evans) was a local authoress based in the Coventry and Nuneaton ...
George Eliot, Agatha, 1st Edition - title page
This poem was written after a visit to a peasant's cottage in Germany with Lewes.
George Eliot (born Mary Ann Evans) was a local authoress based in the Coventry and Nuneaton district, from 1819-1880.
Full ...
George Eliot, Brother and Sister, 1st Edition - title page
These poems draw on her relationship with her brother Isaac and their childhood growing up in Nuneaton.
George Eliot (born Mary Ann Evans) was a local authoress based in the Coventry and Nuneaton ...
George Eliot, Impressions of Theophrastus Such..., - portrait
George Eliots' portrait and title page of 'Impressions of Theophrastus Such'.
The watercolour drawing by Caroline Bray, (1814-1905) dates to around 1842. The original is in the collections of the National ...
George Eliot, Impressions of Theophrastus Such..., 1st Edition - title page
George Eliot finished the manuscript in 1878 but it wasn't published until 1879, as she wanted to leave a respectful time between Lewes' death and it's publication. This was her last work before she died.
George ...
George Eliot, a selection of first edition spines.
A selection of first edition spines.
George Eliot (born Mary Ann Evans) was a local authoress based in the Coventry and Nuneaton district, from 1819-1880.
Giambattista Geraldi Cinthio, Hecatommithi, 1580 - p.252, of vol 1: colophon
A printer's details on an Italian Shakespeare sourcebook.
The 'colophon', or printer’s note was often placed on the final page of a book on its completion. This, at the end of Hecatommithi, part ...
Giambattista Geraldi Cinthio, Hecatommithi, 1580 - binding
A continental binding contemporary with Shakespeare.
Vellum was occasionally used for decorative bindings, especially on the continent of Europe. This binding, probably from Venice, has neat gilded ...
Giambattista Geraldi Cinthio, Hecatommithi, 1580 - printer's device, title page volume 2, detail.
A printer's device on a Shakespeare Italian sourcebook.
Many of the books to be found on the bookstalls of cosmopolitan Elizabethan London were imported from the printing houses of France, and Italy. ...
Giambattista Geraldi Cinthio, Hecatommithi, 1580 - title page, Vol 2.
A source in Italian for Shakespeare.
It is not known whether Shakespeare ever travelled abroad, but several Italian sources for his plays had no published English translation at the time he was writing. ...
Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, 1620 - Book 2, p.112r.
A ribald tale in a Shakespeare sourcebook
Shakespeare’s wide range of reading gave him a knowledge of many Italian writers and their work that he might potentially use in his plays, or poems. ...
Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, 1620 -Book 2, title page
A Shakespeare source translated into English.
The two volumes of the Decameron in the English translation by John Florio came from the workshop of the same printer, Isaac Jaggard, who was responsible ...