Condition Continued: Curiously, in a good number of instances you can see lightly some of the tracings of the figures in the etchings on the text pages across from them. I'm confident that would be the case with all of the copies of this edition. The tracings, where they occur, are quite light and have absolutely no impact on one's ability to read the print (I have provided a photograph). The text pages and pages with the Plates are also in very good condition. I'm not seeing any creasing. I didn't see any tears. There are no markings on any of them or anywhere in the book. There are no attachments of any kind. And no one has written their name or anything else anywhere. With all that said, the binding of the pages is not wonderful. The inside covers and end papers are blue. The blue front end paper and the two white end papers that follow it are bound together in one gathering. The next bound gathering takes us through to the second plate. The next to the sixth plate. The next bound gathering takes us through to the tenth plate. The next to the fourteenth. The next to the eighteenth (I'm seeing a pattern). The next to the twenty-second. The next to the text page of the twenty-sixth. And in the last gathering of pages there is the twenty-sixth plate, one blank end paper and one blue end paper. Each of these gatherings is detached from the other gatherings. The blue front end paper has some late staining off its inside edge and small losses off its bottom edge. One other thing: the page edges are all gilt. They look very bright. 

Estes And Lauriat, Boston, 1877. Hardcover. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe with Illustrative Selections From The Text Of Bayard Taylor's Translation. Etchings by Moritz Retzsch; engravings by Henry Moses.

'Friedrich August Moritz Retzsch was a German painter, draughtsman, and etcher. He was born in the Saxon capital Dresden. He joined the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts in 1798 under Cajetan Toscani and Józef Grassi, later working autodidactically, copying the famous pictures of the Gemäldegalerie, among them a copy of the Sixtinian Madonna. He was made a member of the Academy in 1817 and professor in 1824. The Cotta publishing house commissioned illustrations for Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Faust (26 plates), which made him financially independent. Goethe liked his work, and he illustrated works by other famous authors, most notably Friedrich Schiller's Lied von der Glocke (43 plates), a Shakespeare Gallery (80 plates), and Bürger's Ballads (15 plates). He also did oil paintings on classical subjects, and portraits. Many of his works were created in a house in the Lößnitz, with a view of the Elbe Valley.'