Faust. Eine Tragödie. Parts I and II. London, Doves Press, 1906 (Part I) and 1910 (Part II).
Two volumes, printed in black and red. Part I (1906), one of 25 copies on vellum (with 300 on paper). Part II (1910), one of 25 copies on vellum (with 250 on paper). The vellum printing is the deluxe edition of both parts. Small quarto (235 × 165 mm).
Original flexible vellum bindings signed by the Doves Bindery (near-pristine; apart from minimal flecking to the head- and fore-edges, an otherwise immaculate copy).
This vellum set is the Doves Press answer to Faust as world monument. By the time Cobden-Sanderson printed it, the press had already placed Dante, Milton and the English Bible within its canon; this Faust is, beside the Bible, among the principal achievements of the Doves Press, and to add Goethe was to make a world-literary claim of the first order.
Faust is Goethe's most restless work, by turns fragment, tragedy, wager, metaphysics, love story, satire, classical vision and redemption drama, and the Doves Press translates that restlessness into an aesthetic monument with black-and-red typography and spacious proportion.
PROVENANCE
The Heribert Tenschert Collection.
REFERENCES
TIDCOMBE DP10 & 20; Marianne Tidcombe, The Doves Press (British Library, 2002); Tomkinson, A Select Bibliography of the Principal Modern Presses; Colin Franklin, The Private Presses; University of Missouri Special Collections, Doves Press exhibition.
Tidcombe DP10 (Part I, 1906; 300 on paper, 25 on vellum) and DP20 (Part II, 1910; 250 on paper, 25 on vellum); Tomkinson 10 and 20.
