This is an amazing thing, the likes of which I'll certainly never see again, and which I feel I lucked out in finding--purchased from a favorite dealer in the Albany area, who buys directly from area estates, and who had just gotten it in and had it sitting on his desk, not yet processed. (I knew it was for me from the cover alone, and of course then begged for him to sell it; very kindly he obliged and I'm grateful.)
This is a hand-drawn re-telling of Roman poet Virgil's epic The Aenied (specifically Part 1), told through a series of wonderful (and wonderfully dramatic) vignette style ink drawings, complete with handwritten captions in the original Latin. So here we begin with the famous opening line: "Arma virumque cano" ("I sing of arms and the man"), introducing the protagonist, Aeneas, and invoking Homer in the process. (The events described in The Aeneid form a sequel to The Iliad and are contemporaneous with the wanderings of Ulysses in The Odyssey.) What unfolds (described by me here in very reduced form) is that Aeneas and his Trojan fleet become shipwrecked in North Africa by a violent storm orchestrated by Juno. They go on to land near Carthage, a city ruled by Queen Dido, with Aeneas’s mother, Venus, intervening to protect them, sending a cupid in disguise that causes Dido to fall in love with him, securing the Trojans a safe haven.
The Latin phrases here are straight from Virgil, but the drawings are all the work of F.B. Greene of Providence, RI, who created this in 1868. And what is especially wonderful here is the richness of the drawings--the more one looks, the more one finds packed in to each of them. I've documented it comprehensively for posterity. All original, executed in black ink, complete with dedication and title page.
7 3/4" x 4 7/16", 20 pages of drawings, one side only, plus hand-lettered title page, dedication page, and blank endpapers. Very good condition, a bit of browning to the black ink and light general toning but really in terrific antique condition.
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