The Divine Comedy. Translated by Melville Best Anderson

Alighieri, Dante, 1265-1321.
The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri Translated into English Verse by Melville Best Anderson with Notes and Elucidations by the Translator and with an Introduction by Arthur Livingston.
New York: Limited Editions Club, 1932.
Call Number: (SPL) PQ 4315 .A5 1932
Gift of Loryn Romadka, from the collection of Austin F. Lutter.
Special Collections, Golda Meir Library

Limited edition of 1500 copies, signed by printer Hans Mardersteig of Verona, Italy. The paper is handmade by the Cartierre di San Marco in Milan, a paper mill originally established in 1460.

The Limited Editions Club wanted this edition to be magnificent and elegant in its simplicity. George Macy writes in the Monthly Letter of the Limited Editions Club:

Now the lines of Dante's Divine Comedy are poetic lines, and the page of type as Dr. Mardersteig has spaced it makes an oblong upon the wider oblong of paper. The design is one of utter chastity, simplicity, severity. It is grand. When an oblong of beautiful black type, sharply and clearly printed upon an oblong of white paper, results in an effect of pictorial beauty for the eye, this is the highest achievement of the printing art; until you will have come to realize that this is a truism, that fancy ornaments and ornate illustrations do not often enhance the beauty of a printed page, you will not have learned to appreciate to its fullest the exquisite delight of lovely printing.