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Rare First Edition of the First Complete English Translation of The Dialogues of Plato; Signed by Translator Floyer Sydenham

PLATO; TRANSLATED BY FLOYER SYDENHAM,.

Plato’s Dialogues.

London: W. Sandby, 1767-1779.

First edition set contains all eleven parts, although without all the individual dated titles. Part one is signed on the dedication page by the translator Floyer Sydenham as usual, and includes a sheet laid in with manuscript instructions to the binder. Quarto, three volumes, bound in contemporary full calf, armorial bookplate. Dated title pages in volumes one and two, each of eleven parts with undated flytitle and dedication leaf, Lesser Hippias and Dissertation both with additional dated part title, ad leaves at beginning of volume one and after The Banquet, as well "proposal" leaf, errata slip in volume three (a few poorly inked lines written over nearly in manuscript). Folding diagram in Philebilus, engraved plate in Meno. Rare, first editions of this important work are scarce.

Price: $15,000.00 Item Number: 140464

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"THE KING OF PHILOSOPHERS": Exceptionally Rare First Edition of the First Complete English Translation of The Works of Plato

TAYLOR, Thomas. [Plato].

The Works of Plato, Viz. His Fifty-Five Dialogues, and Twelve Epistles, Translated From the Greek; Nine of the Dialogues by the Late Floyer Sydenham, and the Remainder by Thomas Taylor: With Occasional Annotations on the Nine Dialogues Translated by Sydenham, and Copious Notes, by the Latter Translator.

London: Printed for Thomas Taylor, By R. Wilks, Chancery-Lane, 1804.

First edition of the first complete English translation of the works of Plato. Quarto, five volumes bound in full pebbled cloth retaining contemporary black morocco spine labels lettered in gilt, half-titles, engraved frontispiece to volume I. In the words of the Prometheus Trust, "Taylor's Works of Plato, has two outstanding features which make it an essential component to the genuine philosophers library. Firstly, Taylor himself translates Plato's Dialogues from within the ancient Greek Tradition. No English translator, before or since, has been so completely at one with the Greek philosophical and religious world view: Taylor fulfills, to the highest degree, the first requirement of the art of translation, that of making the original writer's thought-patterns his own. Although Thomas Taylor lived in eighteenth and nineteenth century London, his spirit breathed the purer airs of an Athens of long ago, his soul worshipped in her temples, and his eyes beheld these things by the clearer light of her sun. To the student of the present day, he delivers the breadth and depth of Platonism remarkably free of the distortions which had darkened the millennium between the closure of the Academy in Athens and his own time. Secondly, Taylor adds to Plato's Dialogues, many of the surviving c...

Price: $14,000.00 Item Number: 131256

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Rare first edition set of Benjamin Jowett's The Dialogues of Plato; attractively bound

JOWETT, Benjamin.

The Dialogues of Plato. Translated into English with Analyses and Introductions.

Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1871.

First edition of Jowett's complete translation of the Dialogues which succeeded in making Plato an English classic. Octavo, four volumes, bound in three quarters vellum over suede-covered boards, gilt tooling to the spine, morocco spine labels lettered in gilt. In near fine condition, bookplate. A rare and attractive set.

Price: $3,500.00 Item Number: 131238

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