This is a beautiful limited edition of Shakepeare’s Venus and Adonis, published by the Shakespeare Head Press at Stratford-on-Avon in 1905. There were 510 copies of this edition printed on handmade paper, and this is No. 50 of those copies, in a fine binding by Bumpus Ltd. on Oxford St. W. in London.
The book has five raised bands, with six gilt-ruled compartments and simple gilt lettering and gilt devices on the spine, gilt fillet borders with corner devices on crushed green morocco, with the letters “A.P.” in a gilt oval in the middle of the front cover, a slim green border with gilt fillets on blank endpapers, followed by the half-title, the limitation page, and the title page, then a dedication page to the Right Honorable Henrie Wriothesley written by Shakespeare himself ages ago, followed by 50 pages of text, seven pages of a Note written by A. H. Bullen in October 1905, the colophon of the Shakespeare Head Press at the rear, and all the edges are gilt.
A. H. Bullen was not only the owner of the Shakespeare Head Press, but a renowned
authority on Elizabethan texts.
The book measures 7 x 5 1/8 in. wide, in a beautiful binding, with just a speck of rubbing along the edge of the spine and at two tips.