I had tremendous luck at the thrift store today. I came home with a box full Franklin Library books, plus a nice edition of Dante.
Other than a little dust, the Franklin Library books were in mint condition, with the pages still stuck together by the gilding. I got Aristotle’s Rhetoric and On Poetics, The Canterbury Tales, the poems of John Donne, Crime and Punishment, Faust, the plays of Henrik Ibsen, selected lives of Plutarch, and selected plays of Shakespeare. For them I paid a royal sum of $3 each.
The Dante is published by Washington Square Press and is not quite as fine as the Franklin books but the paper and printing are very good and the volumes feature some very interesting modern illustrations. The text is presented in Italian and blank verse English translation by Louis Biancolli.
These books were only $1 each. Alas Purgatorio was missing. Perhaps it is appropriate that I must wait to get my hands on a copy…
