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FIRST COMPLETE EDITION OF PLATO IN ENGLISH

PLATO.

Taylor’s translation “had a strong influence on the English Romantics. In the poetry of William Blake… much of the symbolism is Neoplatonic. The Platonism of the English Romantic poets Coleridge and Shelley also derives from Taylor, although both were able to read the original texts. Taylor also deeply influenced Emerson and his circle in America. Later, in the early 20th century, the influence of Taylor’s writings was again apparent in the Irish poet and dramatist William Butler Yeats” (Britannica).

FIRST COMPLETE EDITION IN ENGLISH OF PLATO’S WORKS; the enormously influential Thomas Taylor translation. Complete five-volume sets are notoriously rare.

“It was through Taylor's translations that the Romantic poets had access to Platonism: they are probably one of the sources of Blake's mythology, as well as his repudiation of the natural science of Bacon and Newton... there is no doubt that Coleridge's acquaintance with Proclus was assisted by Taylor's translation... [In America], R. W. Emerson read Taylor's translations enthusiastically, and Taylor's influence was felt among Emerson's disciples, adepts of ‘transcendental philosophy’ such as Amos Bronson Alcott, William T. Harris, Thomas M. Johnson, Hiram K. Jones, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson... Emily Dickinson, who was a friend of Higginson, therefore probably owed her Platonism ultimately to Thomas Taylor” (DNB). Taylor's translation was a revision and completion of the work begun by Floyer Syndenham (1710-1787) .

The Works of Plato, viz. his Fifty-Five Dialogues, and Twelve Epistles, translated from the Greek; Nine of the Dialogues by the Late Floyer Syndenham, and the Remainder by Thomas Taylor. London: Printed for Thomas Taylor by R. Wilkes... sold by Jeffery and Evans, 1804. Quarto, contemporary marbled boards sympathetically rebacked and recornered. Five volumes. Engraved plate of diagrams.; section titles. Volume I with two leaves remargined and one leaf with significant paper repair (with no loss of text). Occasional foxing but generally text exceptionally clean with wide margins. A very handsome set. RARE. $8000.