The Vision; or, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise of Dante Alighieri.

ALIGHIERI, Dante.

Item Number: 119943

London: Frederick Warne and Co, [1844].

The Albion edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy with a fore-edge painting of Dante. Octavo, bound in full tree calf with elaborate gilt titles and tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, green morocco spine label lettered in gilt, double gilt ruling to the front and rear panels with fleuron cornerpieces, gilt turn-ins and inner dentelles, marbled endpapers, engraved frontispiece portrait of Dante. With a fore-edge painted portrait of Dante. Translated by Rev. Henry Francis Cary. With a life of Dante, chronological view of his age, additional notes, and an index. In near fine condition. A lovely example.

Dante began writing The Divine Comedy in 1308 and completed it in 1320, a year before his death in 1321. The epic poem is widely considered the most important work of Italian literature and one of the greatest works of world literature. Although recognized as a masterpiece in the centuries immediately following its publication, the work was largely ignored during the Enlightenment, with some notable exceptions such as Vittorio Alfieri; Antoine de Rivarol, who translated the Inferno into French; and Giambattista Vico, who in the Scienza nuova and in the Giudizio su Dante inaugurated what would later become the romantic reappraisal of Dante, juxtaposing him to Homer. The Comedy was "rediscovered" in the English-speaking world by William Blake – who illustrated several passages of the epic – and the Romantic writers of the 19th century.