Shota Rustaveli. The Man in the Panther's Skin: A Romantic Epic (Vepkhist'q'aosani). A Close Rendering from the Georgian Attempted by Marjory Scott Wardrop. Illustrations by M. Tavakarashvili, 1966. In English.

Rust'haveli, Shot'ha. The Man in the Panther's Skin: A Romantic Epic. A Close Rendering from the Georgian Attempted by Marjory Scott Wardrop. With a Preface by Sir Oliver Wardrop. Illustrations by Mamuka Tavakarashvili from a 17th-century Georgian manuscript. Designed by Revas Tarkhan-Mouravi.
Tbilisi: Literatura da Khelovneba, 1966 (printed at Printing House No. 1, Tbilisi). 375, [1] pp.: 15 illustrations. Reprint of the English edition, London, 1912. Parallel title page in Georgian.
Cloth hardcover, 22 cm. Print run 10,000 copies.
In good condition.

Shota Rustaveli's twelfth-century epic, written at the court of Queen Tamar, is the national poem of Georgia, and this is its first complete English translation in prose. It is the work of Marjory Scott Wardrop (1869-1909), who translated several Georgian texts into English, and it was published posthumously in London in 1912 by her brother Oliver Wardrop, who supplied the preface. The title page calls it a close rendering attempted from the Georgian, and the verse is numbered to match the Georgian stanzas, with footnotes on difficult readings. This Tbilisi reprint of 1966, produced by the Georgian publishing house Literatura da Khelovneba in an edition of 10,000, was issued in the year the poet's 800th anniversary was celebrated in Georgia. It reproduces the English text of 1912 and adds a parallel Georgian title page. The colour plates reproduce miniatures by Mamuka Tavakarashvili, the seventeenth-century painter and calligrapher who illustrated a manuscript of the poem in 1646. The book was designed by Revas Tarkhan-Mouravi. The pale cloth is blocked with a black panther, and the endpapers show a horseman fighting a panther in black, white and orange, a motif repeated as an orange panther at the foot of the text pages.