Orlando Furioso: - 1783

London: Printed for the author, etc., 1783. First edition of this translation.. Good. Octavo (23 cm). Five volumes. Engraved frontispiece with tissue guard in each volume, after Angelica Kauffman, Thomas Stothard (engraved by William Blake), Gertrud Metz, and William Hamilton. Engraved portraits of Hoole and Ariosto in volume 1. Illustration of Ariosto's chair and inkwell in volume 1. Errata and subscriber list bound in at end of volume 5. Complete collation upon request. In roughly contemporary tree-calf marbled leather over pasteboard, gold garlanded borders made with a roller tool. Spines decorated in gold with stars within roundels. Recent black leather title labels. Volume labels not present. Spine ends worn, with fissure visible along spine of volume IV. Light wear to edges. Scattered foxing. Tender joints reinforced with Japanese paper. Ownership inscription on front blank. The19th-century literary historian Henry Hallam called Ariosto "Europe's second-favorite poet after Homer." Indeed there was an appetite for a modern English translation to replace the Elizabethan version by John Harington. John Hoole assumed the enormous task, and produced this very popular version in rhymed couplets with extensive annotation and a biographical essay. The publication is notable for the commission, in volume three, of a frontispiece plate engraved by William Blake, as well as for plates after Angelica Kauffman, Gertrud Metz, and William Hamilton.