Estimated Price:

   $   

Realized Price:

   $   

What is this symbol? This symbol indicates that this auction hose has verified this price result.

Log in or subscribe to view price data

MORRIS, William (1834-1896). The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs. London: John Strangeways for Ellis and White, '1877' [1876].

8° (230 x 147mm). Half-title. (Very occasional light marking.) Original paper-backed grey boards, spine with printed paper lettering-piece, uncut (boards lightly rubbed at edges and marked, spine worn causing partial loss of lettering-piece and splitting, lower board detached), 20th-century morocco-backed box. Provenance: Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Bt (1833-1898, presentation inscription on half-title 'Edward Burne Jones from WM Dec: 3 r d. 1876') -- Sir Hugh Walpole (1884-1941, bookplate).

FIRST EDITION, ONE OF 25 LARGE-PAPER COPIES ON WHATMAN. PRESENTATION COPY INSCRIBED BY MORRIS TO BURNE-JONES, THE ILLUSTRATOR OF THE KELMSCOTT EDITION. Although dated '1877' on the title page, Sigurd the Volsung was published in late November 1876, and was the work that 'Mr. Morris justly considered his masterpiece' (A Note by William Morris (Hammersmith: 1898), p. 57). Morris had planned a Kelmscott Press edition in 1891, to be illustrated with 25 images by Burne-Jones, but the artist was very reluctant to undertake the project, and -- despite being announced in the list of 26 November 1895 and again in the list of 1 June 1896 as 'in the press' -- it remained uncompleted on the author's death in 1896, and was only published by the Kelmscott Press in 1898, with two illustrations by Burne-Jones (see lot 101). Buxton Forman 43; Wise Ashley Library III, p. 169.