[ARTHURIANA]; BOURCHIER, John Lord Berners (trans.) - History of the Valiant Knight Arthur of Little Britain, the

London: Printed for White, Cochrane, and Co. 1814. The Key Companion To Malory's Morte d'Arthur With Twenty-Five Hand-Colored Engravings One of Twenty-Five Large Paper Copies [ARTHURIANA]. BOURCHIER, John Lord Berners (trans.). The History of the Valiant Knight Arthur of Little Britain. A Romance of Chivalry. Originally Translated From the French by John Bourchier, Lord Berners. A New Edition. With a Series of Plates, From Illuminated Drawings Contained in a Valuable MS. of the Original Romance. London: Printed for White, Cochrane, and Co. 1814. One of 25 Large Paper Copies printed on thick paper. First edition. Quarto (11 7/8 x 9 1/2 inches; 302 x 240 mm.). [xvi], [i-iii], iv-xxvii, [1, blank], [1]-544 pp. Twenty-five hand-colored plates engraved by Charles Heath, and twenty-five engraved outline plates. Title-page printed in black and red. Some foxing to the plain outline plates only, otherwise clean and fresh. The hand colored plates framed in gold and heightened in silver and gum arabic. Nineteenth century half green scored calf over marbled boards ruled in gilt, expertly rebacked with the original spine laid down. Spine with five raised bands decoratively tooled in compartments, red calf leather label lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers, entirely uncut. With the armorial bookplate of Cardiff Castle on front paste-down. Housed in a green cloth slipcase. Edited by Edward Vernon Utterson (1776-1856) and reprinted from the edition published by Robert Redborne c. 1555. With a reproduction of original title-page: Arthur of Brytayn [on scroll]. The hystory of the moost noble and valyaunt knyght of lytell brytayne .. [woodcut]. "John Bourchier Lord Berners (1467-1553) is best known for his English translations of various European worlds of history and literature, especially the fourteenth century Chronicles of Jean Froissart. Because of their literary merit many of Berner's translations influenced the work of later Elizabethan writers and chroniclers" (Wagner, Enclyclopedia of Tudor England, p. 157); Berner's Arthur of Britain is said to have influenced Spenser. Arthur of Lytell Brytayne is Berner's translation of Artus de la Petite Bretagne, a fourteenth-century prose chivalric romance which was first printed in Lyons in 1493; Berners appears to have used the second version of 1496. The Arthur cycle of legends began with Geoffrey of Monmouth's 12th century Historia Regum Britanniae. The Arthurian legend spread through Europe, particularly in France and Germany. It should be noted that Malory based Le Morte d'Artur on existing French as well as English stories; it is no accident that Malory's title is in French. "It gives me great pleasure to bear testimony to the manner, equally spirited and faithful, in which the artist has executed these Engravings, which I am confident the possessors of this work will agree with me in considering as accompaniments infinitely more elegant and appropriate to a 'Romance of Chivalry,' than the rude and shapeless wood-cuts given in Redborne's edition' (Utterson, Preface). Landscape and figure engraver Charles Heath (1785-1848) was one of the most active and influential figures in British book production over the first half of the nineteenth-century. Cf. Esdaile, p. 13 (1st & 2d Redborne editions). .

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