The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia - Volume 1 of 2 - Hardcover
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About this item
by Philip Sidney (Author)
The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, Volume 1 of 2, opens a complete Standard large-print setting of the selected 1907 composite edition. This first hardcover retains the original title matter, Ernest A. Baker's Introduction and Life of Sidney, the testimonies, Sidney's dedication, Books I and II, and their first two eclogues. The companion Volume 2 begins at the original Book III boundary and completes the selected work. The division is a physical binding choice, not an abridgment or a claim that Sidney first published two volumes.
Sidney's narrative moves between pastoral disguise and questions of rule, loyalty, friendship, and judgment. Its prose scenes are interrupted by poems and songs whose lines and indentation have been retained from the selected HTML witness. In this first volume, 2,468 source-classified verse lines remain in their original order. The printed Contents marks the Introduction, books, and eclogues so that a reader can return to a change of speaker or scene without losing the larger argument.
The source is a 1907 edition edited by Ernest A. Baker, not a facsimile of the posthumous 1590 printing. The complete selected witness also includes an addition attributed to Sir William Alexander and a Sixth Book by Richard Beling, both in Volume 2. Giving their roles explicitly matters: the later material is part of the book being presented, but the whole 1907 composite should not be described as a single, solely Sidney-authored 1590 text.
This Standard Large Print Edition is a 7-by-10-inch case-laminate hardcover. The body is set in 18-point Atkinson Hyperlegible Next with 27-point line spacing. Ragged-right setting avoids stretched gaps between words, and the text is not divided at line endings. Generous margins leave room for a bound page to be held and read. These are specific print design choices, not a claim of WCAG conformance for a fixed-layout hardcover. The selected historical HTML witness contains no interior illustrations.
All of the 1907 source's original endnotes and transcriber's notes remain after Book VI in Volume 2. That apparatus includes notes to Baker's Introduction and to Books I and II, so a reader using this first hardcover should consult its companion for those original notes. This placement preserves each note group in source order while keeping the narrative split at a real book boundary. The source note explains the arrangement and distinguishes old page references from pages in this new edition.
An original Lagniappe asks what Arcadia's imagined world can teach when read beside Sidney's separate A Defence of Poesie. That companion essay cites a distinct historical work, first printed in 1595, through Project Gutenberg's separately identified transcription. It does not insert the Defence into Arcadia or imply that the two electronic witnesses share an edition. About This Series places this first volume on the Classics Picked For You shelf and names the physical companion needed to finish the work.
ISBN 9798259516076 identifies Volume 1 alone: the opening through Book II and its eclogues. ISBN 9798259516120 completes the selected 1907 work. Neither hardcover claims to reproduce the 1593 copytext.
The exterior uses a public-domain 1743 engraving of Sir Philip Sidney by Jacob Houbraken from the Rijksmuseum, after a painting by Isaac Oliver. This historical cover art is separate from the Project Gutenberg reading witness, which has no illustrations. The source note identifies the 1907 copytext, its contributors, and historical page references.
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