Description
Limited edition of Henry the Eighth by Albert Frederick Pollard, from the estate of Arthur G. Soames.
Folio, vii, 302pp. Three-quarter red morocco, red cloth boards. Double ruled gilt trim, top edge gilt. Five raised bands, gilt-trimmed compartments, title in gilt on spine. Marbled endpapers. Finely bound by Bayntun Riviere in Bath, England, with imprint along bottom of the front flyleaf. Solid text block, faint soiling to covers, touch of wear to corners and bottom edges. Faint splash mark to rear cover.
Bookplate of British Army Officer Arthur G. Soames affixed to front endpaper.
Complete with 43 illustrated plates, with an additional two states of the frontispiece portrait of King Henry VIII; one monochrome and one in color. This copy is from the smaller limitation run, being one of 250 copies printed on Japanese paper, this is number CLXXXV (185). A nice example in a beautiful morocco binding.
The owner of this copy, Arthur Granville Soames (1886 – 1962) was a British Army officer in the Coldstream Guards. During WWI, Soames was wounded at the Battle of the Aisne, and later served as brigade major and in other staff posts on the Western Front. In 1919, he was awarded OBE and retired the same year. HIs son, Arthur Christopher John Soames, later married Mary Churchill, the youngest daughter of Winston Churchill; through that marriage, Arthur Granville Soames became the father-in-law of Churchill’s daughter and part of the extended Churchill family.
