ASHENDENE PRESS. BOCCACCIO, Giovanni. ~ Il Decameron di Giovanni Boccaccio.
One of 105 copies on Batchelor 'Bugle' paper, 6 copies were printed on vellum. Initials specially designed by Graily Hewitt usually printed in blue - particularly noticeable is the lavish Q which opens the text.Printed in two columns in Subiaco type in red, blue and black. Folio, in original linen backed holland boards with printed paper spine label. Boards rubbed with bumping to lower corners, edges very mildly darkened, very clean internally.
The printing of the Ashendene Decameron was begun in 1913 but was interrupted by the war, so it wasn't finished until 1920. Hornby relates a fine story in his Bibliography. A copy of this book was sent by Maggs to a client in Kansas where the book was impounded and destroyed as an 'immoral book' - "this banning and wanton destruction of a great classic in the original language seems to be worth recording as somewhat of a curiosity in the annals of censorship".
The used of red and blue is particularly successful in the Decameron. Lionel Muirhead wrote of it: "the reading of a finely printed & designed folio is after all quite a secondary matter & the lust of the eye is all that need be studied & that is amply provided for in these pages". Cockerell wrote quite charmingly: "You have hit the very middle of the bulls-eye".
Tiny withdrawal note on lower endpaper from U.C. Library dated Nov. 27th, 1957, bookseller’s label of Philip Duschesnes of New York on lower pastedown.