Lot 75: DONNE, JOHN.

XXVI Sermons...The Third Volume. T.N. for James Magnes, 1660/1

Condition Note: folio, first edition, first issue of title-page, woodcut device on title, woodcut headpiece and initials, nineteenth-century half cloth, marbled boards, all edges red, title-page foxed and dust-stained, light staining to outer margins of last few leaves, very slight wear to covers, extremities bumped, spine faded, browning to endpapers

Wing D1872; Keynes 31

Edmund Gosse, bookplate on upper pastedown; I.A. Shapiro, ownership inscription dated July 1929 on front free endpaper

According to the Preface by John Donne the Younger, only 500 copies of this work were printed: "The Impression consists onely of Five hundred, which will somewhat advance the Price; but the buyer being at liberty, he can receive no prejudice." XXVI Sermons is therefore the rarest of the three folio volumes of Donne's sermons.