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APULEIUS, Lucius.
The XI. bookes of the Golden Asse:
containing the Metamorphosie of Lucius Apuleius, interlaced with sundry pleasant and delectable Tales: With an excellent Narration of the marriage of Cupid and Psyches, set out in the fourth, fifth and the sixth Bookes. Translated out of Latine into English, by William Adlington.
Publisher: London: by Thomas Harper, for Thomas Alchorn, and are to be sold at his shop, 1639
Stock code: 37008
Price: £3,000 Currency Conversion
Fifth edition in English. First published in 1566, all earlier editions are unseen in commerce and this 1639 edition is distinctly uncommon, only two copies having appeared at auction in the last 32 years. Adlington's Elizabethan translation of Apuleius' second century novel seems likely to have been the edition available to Shakespeare, who used the story as source for A Midsummer Night's Dream. It must also be the earliest example in English of the episodic picaresque novel, predating by a decade or so the first English translation of Lazarillo de Tormes.
Small quarto (174 × 134 mm). Eighteenth-century sprinkled calf, red morocco label added to style. Contemporary inscription of John Heathcote to title; engraved bookplate of Sir Michael Newton. Small amount of worm to foot of gutter at end, a few trivial spots or stains, a nice copy.
