Fore Edge Friday
A few weeks ago, we mentioned that we hold two copies of Milton’s Paradise Lost printed by Charles Whittingham for Thomas Heptinstall in 1799, and that both copies have fore-edge paintings! We’ve already displayed one copy with its single painting; today we present the second copy, which bears not one, but two fore-edge paintings! This is called a double fore-edge painting, where one painting is revealed when the pages are fanned, and then when the book is flipped over and fanned the other way, a different painting appears. There are also triple fore-edge paintings (which we do not hold), where paintings are made on two opposite-fanned edges, and then a third painting is applied to the closed, gilded edge.
Like the first copy, this book is also bound in gold-tooled red Morocco goatskin with all edges gilded, but the cover tooling is less ornate and the copy is a bit more battered than the first copy, as are the paintings. The first copy had a painting that seemed to relate to the book’s content, but in this copy the paintings appear to have no relation at all. On one side is a painting of an early 19th-century landscape of the city of Philadelphia on either the Delaware or Schuylkill river. The other is a much more worn painted landscape of Boston from either Boston Harbor or the Charles River.