£300
4to, pp. [iv], 348, [8]. Contemporary sprinkled calf, spine gilt in compartments, red morocco label. A little faint spotting. Somewhat rubbed and scratched, some surface loss from label, spine gilt partly rubbed away. Armorial bookpate of John Wilson, Bursar of Trinity College, Cambridge, covering an earlier bookplate (possibly of the same owner).
The quarto issue - a 3-volume duodecimo was printed the same year - of the letters of Pliny the Younger, printed by the Foulis Press. This is almost certainly a Foulis binding, with the distinctive cross spine pattern which Gaskell found on 'a surprisingly wide range of Foulis books, and... nowhere else' ('Early Work', The Library Fifth Series VII p. 87.), though he could not rule out this being another binder who happened to handle a huge number of Foulis volumes. It also matches exactly the decoration on another copy of the same edition we have previously handled.
