Iphigenie auf Tauris. London, Doves Press, 1912.
Deluxe edition, one of 20 copies printed in two colours on snow-white vellum (Tidcombe DP28, Tomkinson 57 record 200 on paper, 20 on vellum, and 12 further vellum copies with gold initials by Graily Hewitt). 110 pp. and one leaf. Small quarto (230 × 165 mm).
Original orange-red morocco with gilt fillets to spine and covers, signed "The Doves Bindery C-S 1912" (pristine; binding and vellum text-block in exceptional state).
Among Goethe's own favourite works, Iphigenie auf Tauris remained for him the achievement of youth that could never be repeated. Speaking to Eckermann late in life, he reflected: "I succeeded with my Iphigenia and Tasso, because I was young enough to penetrate and animate the ideal of the stuff with sensual feeling. At my present age, such ideal subjects would no longer be suited to me, and I do right in selecting those which comprise within themselves a certain degree of sensuality." [Eckermann]. The remark reveals how Goethe himself understood the play, not as an abstract exercise in Classicism, but as a rare balance of ideal form and living human feeling.
That balance made Iphigenie an ideal choice for the Doves Press. Founded by T. J. Cobden-Sanderson and Emery Walker, the press sought an equally disciplined harmony of typography, proportion and craftsmanship. Cobden-Sanderson's belief that "The Book Beautiful" must be beautiful as a whole finds one of its purest expressions here. Printed in black and red on snow-white vellum and preserved in its original Doves Bindery morocco, the edition transforms Goethe's classical drama into an Arts and Crafts masterpiece, where literary restraint and typographic restraint illuminate one another.
Distinct from both the paper issue and the twelve vellum copies illuminated by Graily Hewitt, this is one of only twenty vellum copies issued in the publisher's original binding.
PROVENANCE
The Heribert Tenschert Collection.
REFERENCES
Tidcombe DP28; Tomkinson 57; Marianne Tidcombe, The Doves Press (British Library, 2002); Colin Franklin, The Private Presses (1969); T. J. Cobden-Sanderson, The Book Beautiful, in Ecce Mundus (Doves Press, 1902); Eckermann, Gespräche mit Goethe; Alexander Turnbull Library, Doves Press Iphigenie record.
