Comely Frontispiece

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A01=Margery Corbett
A01=R.W. Lightbown
Author_Margery Corbett
Author_R.W. Lightbown
Book design
Category=AB
Category=AF
Category=AGA
Category=AK
Category=AKH
Category=DSB
Category=JBCC
Category=NHD
Category=NHTB
Category=UG
Design in British literature
early modern print culture
Eighteenth century book design
emblem studies
engraved title-page analysis
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_computing
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
iconography research
Literature and culture
Renaissance book illustration
scholarly publishing England
Title page design
visual rhetoric history

Product details

  • ISBN 9781041008712
  • Weight: 640g
  • Dimensions: 178 x 254mm
  • Publication Date: 01 May 2025
  • Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Hardback
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Many of the major books published in the years between 1550 and 1660 – one of the richest periods in English culture – were embellished with an elaborate engraved title-page. The Comely Frontispiece (1979) selects twenty such title-pages which represent the different branches of learning – theology, philosophy, history, poetry, medicine – and explains that these pages were not mere ornaments but visual epitomes in the emblematic mode of significant aspects of the book. They were designed by the author and explore the whole world of Renaissance emblematic imagery on which they drew. We see how famous figures used the engraved title-page to express the ideas they had in mind when their books were conceived and written – ideas about the Church and society, philosophy and manners, poetry and drama, science and medicine – so that it affords us an exceptional insight into what they themselves considered was important or attractive in their own creations.

Margery Corbett and R.W. Lightbown

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