Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Signed Bayntun-Riviere Full Leather Binding

Binding Details:  Signed Bayntun-Riviere binding featuring full leather polished calf boards with elaborate gilt decorations and titling to the spine in a green polished calf tile as well as five raised spine hubs. There are doubled ruled boards, edge and inner dentelles, gold gilted page ends and marbled endpapers. The Bayntun Riviere binders stamp appears on the top of the first free endpaper.

Book Details:  The Oxford Standard Author’s Edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson was first published in 1904. This is the 1953 new edition of the work by the Oxford University Press to correct errors to the text in the 1904 edition as well as improve the notes and index. Christopher Hibbert in his summary of the book wrote, “The most celebrated English biography is a group portrait in which an extraordinary man paints the picture of a dozen more. At the center of a brilliant circle which included Burke, Reynolds, Garrick, Fanny Burney and even George III, Boswell captures the powerful, troubled, and witty figure of Samuel Johnson, who towers above them all. Yet this is also an intimate picture of domestic life, which mingles the greatest talkers of a talkative age with the hero's humbler friends in a picture which is, before all things, humane. As a young man about London, James Boswell was obsessed by literature, and, on a fateful day in 1763, he attached himself with unswerving tenacity to the dominant literary figure of his age—the splendidly rotund, articulate, and humane Dr. Samuel Johnson. What followed was the most famous of friendships between writers and the basis for the remarkable documentation contained in Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, the greatest and most compelling of all biographies.”

The book measures 7.25” x 5” x 1.75” with 1489 pages that includes a preface to the 1953 edition, introduction, chronological catalogue of the prose work of Samuel Johnson, and detailed index.

 Condition Report: The binding is in FINE condition with some minor marks to the gold gilted page ends. The binding is tight with secure hinges. The leather remains whole and supple. Internally, the text is very clean with no foxing. Overall, this is a beautiful signed Bayntun - Riviere binding that houses on of the great works of literature.

Photographs of the binding appear in the photo section of this listing.