£120
FIRST EDITION, 8vo, pp. 312. Contemporary half vellum, green cloth boards, spine lettered in gilt, floral patterned endpapers, green silk bookmark. A touch of foxing, mainly to flyleaves. Binding a little dustsoiled. Modern ownership inscription to front flyleaf.
The first edition of this selection made by John Addington Symonds (1840-1893) from a pair of earlier works under similar titles, Sketches in Italy and Greece, and Sketches and Studies in Italy (both 1879). The 'more picturesque pieces' are included, to appeal to travellers, and the work was published by Tauchnitz in their Collection of English Authors for sale on the continent. Symonds had a busy 1883, also privately publishing in the same year his exploration of homoerotic love in Greek poetry titled 'A Problem in Greek Ethics', which Walt Whitman called 'the most exhaustive eulogy of Greek love'.
