PASIPHAE.
by Swinburne, Algernon Charles
Printed in an edition limited to 500 copies(Cock-A-Hoop 185). Swinburne's poem, here correctly printed for the first time, has been prepared for press from the manuscript in the British Museum and introduced by Randolph Hughes, who remarked that "the get-up of the book is admirable...worthy of the poem itself, and that is saying a lot" (Cave, History of the Golden Cockerel Press 202). "Among the greatest poets of antiquity, Euripedes, Propertius, Virgil, and Ovid all found in the legend of beautiful, tortured Pasiphae, who loved a bull (as a result of divine wrath), a subject to evoke sublime verse, and Swinburne when he chose this theme, was in noble company. Ignored by editors and critics-- because of its subject matter-- the poem is nevertheless comparable with his finest work. Although this is a sister volume to "Hero & Leander (no. 183), I did not want the two to be identical twins, and so used Bembo roman type to give a different effect. (Cock-A-Hoop 185). Illustrated with 7 copper engravings by John Buckland Wright (1897-1954) with his usual "restrained, but full-blooded eroticism." Light rubbing of covers.
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