La Divina Commedia.

340 x 210 mm. 458, [2] pages. Handsome woodcut headings and initials designed by Anna Simons. Original editorial binding, pale blue cardboard. On the spine printed title on paper label. A very fine copy, uncut. A few minor spots on the last leaves.

Provenance: count Walfredo della Gherardesca di Donoratico (on the front pastedown engraved ex-libris, with the pencilled note ‘VI Centenario di Dante Anno 1921'; Livio Ambrogio collection.

Limited edition (it is no. 212 of 300 copies) printed by Bremer Presse for the sixth centenary of Dante's death in 1921. The Bremer Presse was one of the first German private presses, founded in 1911 in Brema by Ludwig Wolde and by Willy Wiegand. In 1918 the printing house moved to Bad Tolz and in 1921 to Munich, where was then destroyed during the Second World War, in 1944. The edition contains the text of the Commedia, edited by Berthold Wiese and decorated with titles and initials designed by Anna Simons, one of the most brilliant pupils of the nineteenth-century greatest calligrapher Edward Johnston (1872-1944), who taught at the Central School of Art and at the Royal College of Art in London.