Milton’s L’allegro and Il Penseroso

Unpaginated but circa 80pp. Cream cloth-covered boards with vignette, gilt lettering, bevelled edges. Brown endpapers. Two colour printing throughout. With thirty illustrations by Birkett Foster, each tissue-guarded and interleaved. There is a small indentation on the edge of the rear board, else the volume is neat, clean, bright and tight throughout. In its original dust jacket (bumped and rubbed at edges, mild chips at spine ends). The thirty designs in this now classic book, originally published in 1855, are characteristic of the best work of Myles Birkett Foster, one of the most versatile of English illustrators. The delicate vignettes subtly compliment Milton’s poetry, which debates the rival delights of mirth and melancholy. 4to.