being a selection of the Songs, Pastoral Eclogues & Elegies
from the Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia,
by Sir Philip Sidney

images by Harry Brockway

1988
56pp
270 x 150mm (10.7 x 5.9in)

£65

Like a child's bunch of flowers picked in a meadow, this tiny selection from the lush pastures of the Arcadia was chosen with an unschooled mixture of high purpose, happy chance and impulsiveness. For more than four hundred years Sir Philip Sidney's poetry has inspired and delighted visitors to his Arcadia and it was to these poems that we immediately turned when we first fell under the spell of Harry Brockway's wood engraving. It was an exciting experience to print these poems in a form which we hoped would bring a few more people to this poet's work, beside a magical set of images from an engraver whose work gains in strength and energy from his parallel work as a sculptor in wood and stone.

Bell type, Monotype set. Printed on Zerkall Halbmatt mould-made paper on a Victoria platen press.
19 wood engravings printed from the wood.
Case bound. Japanese raw silk spine with red leather title label blocked in gilt, boards covered with patterned paper, designed by the artist, printed blue on red. Slipcase covered in brown cloth with inset of printed wood engraving repeated from the text.