ESTIENNE Charles Poetae Graeci Prinipes heroici carminis & alii nonnulli.

Renouard, Estienne, 126:5; Schreiber, 160.

Henri Estienne’s masterpiece.

The first Estienne edition of this collection of texts by classical Greek authors.

This monumental edition is considered to be one of the typographic masterpieces produced by this famous workshop. In 1566, at the Spring Fair in Frankfurt, Henri Estienne offered for sale the most beautiful book he had ever printed. These two majestic folio volumes are considered to be his typographic masterpieces.

They are composed in the large ‘king’s Greek’ typeface, engraved by Claude Garamond from models supplied to him by the Cretan calligrapher Ange Vergèce. These are undoubtedly, with the elegant curves of their ligatures, the most beautiful Greek characters ever engraved. A literary monument to Humanism.

The first part is dedicated to the poems of Homer, which Estienne arranged according to the study of 19 previous editions; this critical edition remained the model for all subsequent editions until the nineteenth century. The second part is devoted to texts by Hesiod, Orpheus, Callimachus, Theocritus, Bion, Moschus, Aratus, Nicander-Musaeus and Pythagoras. The editio princeps contains fragments by the Greek poets Solon, Turtaeus and Mimnerus.

“Henri Estienne’s monumental collection of the Greek poets, sumptuously printed in the two large sizes of the ‘grecs du roi’. This is unquestionably Henri Estienne’s typographic masterpiece, of which copies in fine condition are difficult to come by. The first part is devoted to the Homeric poems; by collating 18 previous printed editions and a vetussissimum exemplar, Henri Estienne succeeded in establishing a critical text of Homer which remained standard until the 19th century… In this work Henri Estienne has employed his personal diacritical notations, which he devised for this volume and for his edition of the Anthology. At the end of the first part he added 56 pages of Annotationes” (Schreiber).

Renouard’s copy bound in red morocco by Derome

A very fine copy, once owned by the bibliophile, bibliographer and collector Renouard, who noted on the endpaper : “L’un des plus beaux monuments de l’érudition & de l’habilité typographique réunis. H. Estienne a consulté avec autant de sagacité que d’attention toutes les éditions précédentes de ces divers poètes, & surtout pour Homère, dont il a publié un texte tellement supérieur que pendant beaucoup d’années la plupart des éditeurs n’en ont cherché de meilleure copie”.

Provenance: A.A. Renouard (autograph note) – Leigh (english bookplate from the 19th century).