A Forest Hymn [Bound with] In The Woods With Bryant, Longfellow, and Halleck. [Fore-edge Painting].

BRYANT, William Cullen.

$1,100.00

Item Number: 139346

New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1860-1862.

Finely bound collection of two classic American poems; decorated with a rare double fore-edge painting. Quarto, bound in full pebbled morocco with gilt titles and tooling to the spine, gilt turn-ins and inner dentelles, marbled endpapers, illustrated with numerous engravings by John A. Nums and John A. Hows, all edges gilt with a concealed double fore-edge painting which reveals a hunting scene and a scene of figure skaters. In very good condition.

The term 'fore-edge painting' can refer to any painted decoration on the fore-edges of the leaves of a book, such as was not uncommon in the 15th and early 16th centuries, particularly in Italy. The term is most commonly used, however, for an English technique quite widely practiced in the second half of the 17th century in London and Edinburgh, and popularized in the 18th century by John Brindley and, in particular, Edwards of Halifax, whereby the fore-edge of the book, very slightly fanned out and then held fast, is decorated with painted views, or conversation pieces. The edges are then squared up and gilded in the ordinary way, so that the painting remains concealed while the book is closed: fan out the edges and it reappears. The technique was practiced by a few other English binders in the late 18th and 19th centuries, and a certain number of undoubted examples survive. The majority of extant examples of fore-edge paintings date to the late 19th and early 20th century on reproductions of books originally published in the early 19th century, including the present volume.