The Comedy of Dante Alighieri, the Florentine. Cantica I. Hell. Cantica II. Purgatory. Cantica III. Paradise. (Three Volumes, first printings). *The Divine Comedy.
London: Penguin, 1949-1962. Maps and diagrams by C.W. Scott-Giles. All three volumes of the Divine Comedy in the Dorothy L. Sayers translation, each volume the first impression. Volume I: 1949. Volume II: 1955. Volume III: 1962. All in the original blue Penguin wraps. Volume I in additional dustjacket with inner flaps, printed with publisher's introduction to the translation. All illustrated with vignette of Dante to the front of wrap. Maps and diagrams in text, folding plan to end of final volume (all by C.W. Scott-Giles, commissioned for this edition). Previous owner's signature vol. I, previous owner's name stamp vol. II. Vol. II worn to spine. Vol. II and III lacking(?) the blank front free endpaper before the halftitle page. Vol II has very small closed tears to the top edge of the outer wraps, not affecting the inner wraps. Vol I has in the bottom corner of the front wrap the small bookseller ticket of the famous, long-gone Melbourne bookshop of Margareta Webber. Volume II has a small round original price sticker. The text is very clean in all volumes. Apart from some light chipping along edges this is a very good set of the first editions. Scarce thus.
Dorothy L. Sayers was (quite apart from being an acclaimed Golden Age crime novelist) a translator and a scholar of Dante. She worked on her translation of the Divine Comedy from the 1940s until her death. (The final volume, two-thirds complete, was finished by her friend Barbara Reynolds). On the inner flaps of the dustjacket of the first printing of the first volume in 1949, the Penguin publisher writes: "By one of those happy coincidences that occasionally delight the world of letters, Miss Sayers' enthusiasm for Dante reached its climax just at the time when the Penguin Classics were launched. [...] To bring Dante home to English-speaking people in all his moods, from the homely and humorous to the terrible and the sublime [...] called for a poet. It has found one." A very good set of the first printings, collectable both for scholars and for Dorothy L. Sayers enthusiasts. Scarce thus. Item #106811
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