Blackwell's Literature Catalogue

Blackwell’s rare books LITERATURE

Blackwell’s Rare Books Direct Telephone: +44 (0) 1865 333555 Switchboard: +44 (0) 1865 792792 Email: rarebooks@blackwell.co.uk Fax: +44 (0) 1865 794143 www.blackwell.co.uk/rarebooks

Blackwell’S rare books

LITERATURE

Blackwell’s Rare Books 48-51 Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3BQ Direct Telephone: +44 (0) 1865 333555 Switchboard: +44 (0) 1865 792792 Email: rarebooks@blackwell.co.uk Fax: +44 (0) 1865 794143 www.blackwell.co.uk/ rarebooks Our premises are in the main Blackwell bookstore at 48-51 Broad Street, one of the largest and best known in the world, housing over 200,000 new book titles, covering every subject, discipline and interest, as well as a large secondhand books department. There is lift access to each floor. The bookstore is in the centre of the city, opposite the Bodleian Library and Sheldonian Theatre, and close to several of the colleges and other university buildings, with on street parking close by.

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Spring 2012

Front cover illustration: Item 33

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1.

(Anthology.) THE BEAUTIES of English Poetry, or a Collection of Poems extracted from the Best Authors. Paris: Sold by Vergani and Favre, [1800/1,] a little foxing at either end, occasional minor browning and damp-staining, pp. [iv], 211, [1], 12mo, contemporary calf, rebacked, sides crackled, sound £550 A very rare anthology, the BL copy being the only one recorded in ESTC . Having discoursed on the instructional function of epic poetry, the anonymous editor continues: ‘To allure those who are inattentive to the excellence of virtue, and direct their thoughts to the noblest qualifications [he has selected] such poems as have been universally esteemed the first ornaments of the English language.’ Accordingly, the selection is easy-going, and sometimes humourous. Authors include Gay, Collins, Cowper, Pope, Dryden, &c, and Mrs. Thrale; also a Byron (not the Byron).

The actual date on the title-page is ‘The ninth year’ (i.e. in the Revolutionary calendar), which began on 23 September 1800; therefore this book was published in 1800 or 1801.

ESTC records but 5 publications by Vergani, including this one: of these 3 others are advertised at the end, plus another not in ESTC .

2.

Austen (Jane) Pride and Prejudice: A Novel.

In three volumes. By the author of “Sense and Sensibility”. Second edition. Printed for T. Egerton. 1813, half-titles discarded, some very faint toning and foxing, two leaves in vol. ii with chips from lower blank margins (on leaf K2 just touching the signature but well clear of text), hinges cracking at titles, a small early inscription erased from vol. i title and present on second leaf, pp. [ii], 307, [1]; [ii], 239, [1]; [ii], 323, [1], 12mo, slightly later half sheep, marbled boards, backstrips with four raised bands, second and fourth compartments gilt lettered direct, spines expertly repaired at joints and endcaps, boards scuffed, edges and corners a little worn, very good (Gilson A4; Keynes 4; Chapman 4) £9,500 The first edition of Pride and Prejudice appeared in January 1813, and sold so quickly that this second edition followed ten months later. The second edition is a close reprint of the first, using the same type (although wholly reset); some misprints have been corrected and there is some variation in punctuation.

‘Those who have once read Pride and Prejudice in three slim duodecimos, with a ha’porth of large type to the page, will not easily reconcile themselves to the inelegance of the modern reprint, close printed in one crowded volume’ (Chapman, quoted in Gilson).

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3.

Austen (Jane) Sense & Sensibility, a Novel. George Routledge & Co. 1849, half-title discarded, slightly dusty, pp. [3]-286, [bound with:] Austen (Jane) Mansfield Park. Simms and M’Intyre, 1851, series half-title discarded, lightly age-toned, pp. [3]-288, 12mo, contemporary half red calf over marbled boards, spine with four raised bands, black morocco lettering piece, a bit darkened, head of spine defective, front joint cracked at foot, a bit of wear elsewhere, sound (Gilson E12, E18) £200 Sense & Sensibility is the first Routledge edition, part of their Railway Library series.

Mansfield Park is part of Simms and M’Intyre’s Parlour Library series.

4.

Austen (Jane) Emma: a Novel. Richard Bentley. 1851, engraved frontispiece by Greatbatch after Pickering, half-title with contemporary ownership inscription of Anne Michell, pp. [iv], 435, 8vo., original brown straight-grain cloth, the backstrip decorated with stylised foliage encircling the title in gilt, the sides with blind borders, yellow endpapers, bookplate of Pamela Lister, small split to the lower joint, extremities of backstrip bumped and with one or two small nicks, faint ringstain to front board, good (Gilson D7E) £400 As Gilson says: ‘few of these reprints survive in libraries’. Bentley first reprinted Emma in 1833, and the novel was repinted several times until the 1860s.

5.

[Brockway (Thomas)] The Gospel Tragedy: an Epic Poem. In Four Books. Printed at Worcester, Massachusetts, by James R. Hutchins, 1795, FIRST EDITION , with a frontispiece designed and engraved by Amos Doolittle, a bit browned and spotted, pronounced water-staining at either end, text corrected in 3 places (see below), pp. iv, [5-] 8-119, 8vo, original tree sheep, worn and scraped in places, cracks in joints but cords holding, contemporary signature at head of title ‘Silvester Gilbert’, sound (Evans, 28345; Wegelin American Poetry 35; ESTC W12473, copies recorded in the US, but none in the UK) £450 Brockway ‘studied theology, and in January, 1772, received a call to settle over the Congregational Church of 69 members in the parish of Lebanon, Connecticut, then known as Lebanon Crank, but since 1804 the town of Columbia. He accepted the call, and was ordained there on June 24, 1772 ... Small of stature, but of indomitable courage, in the time of the Revolution he was a staunch patriot, and served as chaplain of Colonel Samuel Selden’s state regiment at New York in 1776. In 1781, when the news of the enemy having landed at New London reached Lebanon during public worship, Mr. Brockway dismissed his congregation with a prayer, and himself with his long gun (being a great hunter) headed a relief expedition’ (Dexter, Yale Graduates ).

There are no errata printed, which makes the correction of two words and the transposition of a whole line intriguing. Silvester Gilbert is possibly one of the subscribers to the Memoirs of Rev. Eleazar Wheelock, Brockway’s predecessor in Lebanon.

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LITERATURE

6.

[Brontë (Charlotte)] Villette. By Currer Bell. In Three Volumes. Vol. I [-III].

Smith, Elder, Co., 1853, FIRST EDITION , 3 vols., bound without the advertisements in vol. i (half-titles not called for), tear in last leaf of vol. i entering the text but with insignificant loss, repaired, gathering O in vol. ii bound in the middle of P, a few scattered finger stains or spots, pp. [iv], 324; [iv], 319, [1]; [iv], 350, [1], 8vo, Edwardian half green morocco, rounded spines with gilt ruled compartments lettered direct, lettered in the upper outer corner of each vol. in gilt ‘Margot’s’ (she who presumably commissioned the binding), spines faded to brown, a little wear and tear, good (Heritage 6; Wise 7) £600 The advertisements in vol. i vary in the number of their pages: they are not however mentioned by Wise.

7.

[Brontë (Charlotte)] The Professor, a Tale. By Currer Bell. In Two Volumes. Smith, Elder & Co. 1857, FIRST EDITION , FIRST ISSUE , with 2pp. of adverts at the end of vol i and 16pp. of adverts at the end of vol. ii dated June, 1857, with half-titles, pp. viii, 294, 2; iv, 258, [2], 8, 16, 8vo, original embossed damson cloth, a bit scuffed, rebacked with brown cloth preserving original (sunned) backstrips, new pastedowns, half-title of vol. i reinforced at gutter, sound (Smith 7; Parrish p. 96; Wise 18) £950 Charlotte Brontë completed The Professor on 27th June 1846, ‘transforming her Brussels experience into an exploration of a happier teacher-pupil relationship... [with her sisters’ first books] the three manuscripts were hawked around various publishers for a year and a half, always travelling in the same reused wrapper that betrayed the signs of previous rejection. Finally in July 1847 Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey were accepted for publication by Thomas Cautley Newby. But The Professor suffered repeated rejection.... [it] was never published in Charlotte Brontë’s lifetime, although she often returned to her first novel during her literary career, in an effort to revive what she referred to as her “idiot child”’ ( ODNB ). In 1857 Smith, Elder & Co. finally published it but despite Brontë’s previous successes it was not an immediate hit; the first edition sheets lasted through several bind-ups with different advertisement sections as well as a one-volume issue at a reduced price. The first issue, as here, is consequently scarce.

8.

‘A Chield’s amang you taking notes, And faith he’ll prent it’ Burns (Robert) Address to the People of Scotland respecting Francis Grose, Esq; the British Antiquarian. To which are added Verses on Seeing the Ruins of an Ancient Magnificent Structure. [?Glasgow: 1797], pp. 8, small 8vo, uncut, traces of a paper wrapper adhering along inner margin of outer leaves, outer leaves a little sunned, very good (Egerer p. 54; ESTC T91530, NLS , BL and Cambridge only; CBEL 2 col. 1991) £400

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Rare. ESTC states ‘Possibly forms part of an edition of: “Poetry; original and selected.”

Glasgow: printed for and sold by Brash and Reid’, 1796-99, the poems of which were issued separately and subsequently collected.’ This is plausible, as the title is listed by Egerer as among the Burns poems included in Vol. II. The added Verses, not by Burns, are signed R.G. The PMM entry for Burns (231, the Kilmarnock edition) is one of the briefest in that venerable catalogue, also one of the most telling: ‘Burns is not only the greatest Scots poet but one of the great poets of any age and nation.’

9.

Butler (Samuel) Hudibras. The First Part. Printed by J.G. for Richard Marriott, 1663, FIRST AUTHORISED PRINTING , line one of imprint ending ‘under Saint’, pp. [iv], 268, [with:] Butler (Samuel) Hudibras. The Second Part. Printed

by T.R. for John Martyn, 1664, FIRST EDITION , pp. [iv], 216, [and:] Butler (Samuel) Hudibras. The Third and Last Part.

Printed for Simon Miller, 1678, a made-up copy from the first and second issues, title leaf verso with license to print (second issue), errata leaf (supplied?) at end and text uncorrected (first issue), ownership inscriptions of Z. Isham and N. Hole to title-page, early manuscript notes to title-page verso, pp. [ii], 285, [3], 8vo, all three washed and pressed (showing some browning and soiling still) and uniformly bound (though of varying heights) in crushed brown morocco by Riviere, a few tidy paper repairs, spines gilt, second and third compartments gilt-lettered direct, turn-ins gilt, joints a bit rubbed and a few just cracking at head, bookplates of Grolier Club member Robert Walsingham Martin, good ( ESTC R5432, R5478, R5481) £1,250 The first editions of the first two volumes, and a mixed copy of the third volume. The bibliography of the work is complex thanks to its immediate popularity; the first edition saw nine separate printings (four of them piracies) in 1663 alone, and each subsequent part was also reprinted and plagiarised. Thorson unpicked the issue points in PBSA vol.

60 (1966); this set is his ‘A’ edition of the first volume (the first authorised edition), his ‘N’ edition of the second (the first printing), and a copy of the third volume with the title-page of his ‘S’ (second printing), the text of his ‘R’ (first printing), and an errata leaf probably supplied from another copy of the ‘R’ edition. The set seems to have been unified in the early twentieth century when it was bound by Riviere for Walsingham Martin, and it was at this point, presumably, that the errata leaf and/or title-page were supplied for the third volume.

The title-page of the third volume has the inscription ‘Z. Isham’, who may be Zacheus Isham (1651-1705), clergyman and book hunter, and one set of notes on the title-page verso (regarding the true derivation of the term ‘Old Nick’) may be his, while the other, about Sir Samuel Luke, appears to be in a slightly different hand.

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LITERATURE

Although Hudibras was much reprinted and read throughout the following centuries and remains well-known, the first edition is not commonly seen or read – the version known today is Butler’s revision and annotation of the first two parts, done before publication of the third; the work was first published as a whole in 1684 and reprinted from that version thereafter. In 1744, Zachary Grey’s edition with further annotations then took over as the standard, so ‘the regular republication of Hudibras as a literary classic [which] continued to the beginning of the twentieth century’ ( ODNB ) was the revision and not the text that appears here.

10.

Annotated in French and English by a woman [Butler (Samuel)] Hudibras. In Three Parts. Written in the time of the Late Wars. Corrected and Amended, with Several Additions and Annotations. Printed and to be Sold by Richard Parker, 1689, 3 parts in one vol., the 2nd and 3rd parts with their own title-pages with different imprints, the first 2 paginated continuously, and the 3rd separately, title-page frayed in foremargin, some browning around the edges scattered small stains or soiling, one leaf with corner torn away and repaired at an early date with the missing words and letters (the begining of the last 3 lines on the verso) filled in by the annotator, pp. [ii], 221, [3], 223-412, [ii], 254, with a single fly-leaf at the front and 7 at the end, 8vo, contemporary calf, rebacked with most of old spine laid down, vestiges of gilt, corners repaired, various ownership inscriptions (see below), good (Wing B6320, another issue of ESTC R12253) £1,100 A highly interesting copy, which has been closely read – there is a substantial manuscript index at the end – and which moreover has been used a as a sort of common-place book by the first owner, one Mary Byards, whose signature appears on the title-page. Her copious entries are in French and English in about equal measure, and comprise (as far as we have been able to identify them) poetical extracts and writings on the theory of poetry and drama. Her hand verges on the minuscule, but is well formed and for the most part legible, though ocasionally obscured at the edges of the pages through browning and fraying, notably at either end. The entries occupy all available space on the paste-downs and fly-leaves, and thereafter are concentrated at: Part One, the beginning and end of Canto I, the end of Cantos II and III; Part Two, the beginning of Canto I; Part Three, the verso of the Part title, and the very end of the text. Among the verses at the end are some satirising physicians (Garth’s Dispensary) and lawyers. Garth seems to have been a favourite author; his Dispensary first appeared in 1699, which means that the collection of quotations continued over at least a decade, or was begun some years after this Hudibras was published.

Four eighteenth-century ownership inscriptions appear, two on the title-page, Henry [surname illegible] and J. Anderson, and written over the notes on the fly-leaf, John ?Cains and John Buck.

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11.

Butler (Samuel) Hudibras. In three parts. Written in the time of the late wars. Glasgow: Printed by R. Urie and Company. 1747, FIRST URIE EDITION , engraved frontispiece portrait and 9 other engraved plates (2 folding), some light spotting, one plate dampmarked in margin, pp. 431, [1], 12mo, contemporary sprinkled calf, spine with five raised bands between double gilt fillets, orange lettering piece in second compartment, the rest with small central lozenge gilt tools, a few tiny marks, armorial bookplate of James Scott of Brotherton, near fine ( ESTC T124714) £350 An exceptionally well-preserved binding. ESTC lists this edition in the British Library and National Library of Scotland only in the UK (with five other locations outside the British Isles). It appeared in the same year that Urie’s partnership with Andrew Stalker and Alexander Carlile (the Co. of the imprint) was dissolved, and was followed by two more editions under Urie’s name alone in 1753 and 1763.

12.

Butler (Samuel) Hudibras, a Poem ... With historical, biographical and explanatory Notes selected from Grey and other Authors: to which are prefixed a Life of the Author, and a preliminary Discourse on the Civil War. A new Edition. ... In Two Volumes. For Akerman [sic]; Walker and Co, Reid, Bigg, [etc.].

1822, 12 hand-coloured aquatint plates by I. Clark, offsetting, inscribed ‘John Brownlow given him by Sandys & C Booth on his leaving Eton on Monday July 26, 1824’ on the front endpaper of vol. i, pp. lxxiv, 444; 494, 8vo, contempory red straight-grained morocco, the spines with ornate gilt tooling , four low raised bands decorated with volutés and gilt lettering, the boards with four double gilt fillet borders with cornerpieces, a.e.g., one or two minor marks, good (Tooley £400 142) A beautifully bound set of the most popular verse satire of the seventeenth century.

13.

Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee Byrom (John) Miscellaneous Poems. To which are added his life and notes by the editor. In two volumes. Leeds: Printed by and for James Nichols, 1814, engraved frontispiece portrait, lightly foxed, pp. xxiv, [ii], 246; iv, 224, 8vo, untrimmed in original boards, spines with paper labels, somewhat soiled and rubbed, good £120 Byrom’s collected Miscellaneous Poems were first published in Manchester in 1773, a decade after his death – with this being the second separate printing and the first in Leeds.

The editor notes that distribution of the first edition was largely confined to Lancashire and Yorkshire, and the long list of booksellers in the imprint in places from Cambridge to Halifax is proof of his intent to spread the word. The epigram in which Byrom coined the names ‘Tweedledum and Tweedledee’ appears at the end of vol. i.

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LITERATURE

14.

The Gordon Castle copy Byron (George Gordon, Lord) Hours of Idleness, a Series of Poems, Original and Translated. Newark: Printed and sold by S. and J. Ridge, 1807, FIRST EDITION , paper watermarked 1806, D3 a cancel as usual, pp. xiii (including half-title), [i], 187, 8vo, contemporary half tree calf, gilt ruled compartments on spine, red lettering piece, gilt coronet and initials F.G. in top compartment, spine a little dry, boards discoloured from the turn-ins, very slightly worn, Gordon Castle book-label inside front cover with printed shelfmark, very good (Randolph p. 9; Hayward 218) £1,750 An attractive copy, a good size (170 x 110 mm), and a good provenance – Byron’s ancestral home. Byron’s mother, Catherine Gordon, was one of the three surviving daughters of George Gordon, twelfth laird of Gight, Aberdeenshire. Gordon Castle, at Gight near Fochabers, was built in 1789 for Alexander 4th Duke of Gordon as a new seat for the Gordon chief. It was the biggest country house in Scotland and though most of the castle has been demolished, a tall block and two wings still remain. Robert Burns visited Gordon Castle on his tour of the Highlands and commemorated the visit in his song Castle Gordon.

15.

In the original printed boards Byron (George Gordon, Lord) English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers. A Satire. Printed for James Cawthorn. [1809,] FIRST EDITION , Randolph’s first issue (Wise’s second issue, first variant; see below), a few page edges slightly spotted, corner-tip of rear flyleaf torn, pp. vi, 54, 12mo, original printed boards, edges untrimmed, slightly rubbed and spotted (one small stain touching one character in imprint on front board) but largely unsoiled, a touch of wear at backstrip ends, old ownership inscription erased from front pastedown, housed in a blue drop-back box, very good (Randolph p.15; Wise I p. 21) £2,500 Byron’s famous satirical reply to a bad review of his Hours of Idleness, and his first major poem. Its bibliography has been called an ‘inextricable tangle’, but Wise and Randolph both disagree with that statement as well as with each other. Wise considered the first issue to be without the preface leaf, which he presumed was only printed partway through the binding process, while Randolph argues that an early dedication copy with the leaf suggests that the printer (‘both dishonest and sloppy’) is more likely to have run out of those pages and bound later copies without it. The other noted issue point is the spelling of ‘despatch/dispatch’ on p. 5, where Wise and Randolph agree in the former spelling being earlier. This copy, with ‘despatch’ and complete with the preface leaf, plus the correct watermark of ‘E&P 1805’ (visible on E3) is therefore Randolph’s first issue, or the first variant of Wise’s second issue. The poem is scarce in the original boards, and especially scarce in this relatively unsoiled and unsophisticated condition.

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16.

Byron (George Gordon, Lord) English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers; A Satire. Fourth edition. Printed for James Cawthorn, and Sharpe and Hailes, 1811, complete with half-title, printed on stiff paper, watermarked ‘J. Whatman/1805’, pp. vii, 85, 8vo, contemporary blue straight-grained morocco, single gilt fillet on sides, spine gilt with a lyre in each compartments, lettered in gilt direct in one compartment, armorial book-plate of Thomas Harrison on top of what may be another book-plate on inside front cover, excellent (Randolph p. 18) £300 An elegant copy of the second fourth edition (first edition 1809; first fourth edition 1810 on unwatermarked paper).

The Preface, which was added to the second edition, is included. The publishers in a footnote state that ‘The noble author had left this country previous to the publication of that edition, and is not yet returned.’

17.

Byron (George Gordon, Lord) The Giaour, A Fragment of a Turkish Tale. Third Edition, with considerable additions. [Bound with:] The Bride of Abydos. A Turkish Tale. Fourth Edition. [And:] The Corsair, a tale. Fourth edition. Printed by T. Davison, Whitefriars, for John Murray, 1813, [Corsair:] 1814, each work complete with half-title, ownership inscription of Blantyre to title-pages, pp. viii, 53, [3, ads.]; [iv], 72; xi, [i], 108, 8vo, contemporary half calf over marbled boards, spine divided by pairs of double gilt fillets, second and fourth compartments dyed slightly darker and lettered in gilt direct, the rest with central gilt tools, rubbed, spine ends slightly defective, a little cracking to head of front joint, good (Randolph pp. 27, 31, 38-9; Wise I pp. 80, 90, 97) £200 Early editions of Byron’s first three ‘Oriental Romances’, bound together. The Giaour was one of Byron’s most immediately successful works, seeing more than a dozen editions (several considerably revised) within two years. This is the variant with p. ii carrying an advertisement for Mme. de Stael’s De L’Allemagne ; Wise calls this ‘Variant B’ but Randolph speculates that it is the earlier version. The Corsair is Randolph’s fourth edition, third issue, second variant, restoring the final 8 pages of poems and with imprints on both p. 100 and p. 108. According to Randolph the fourth edition was almost certainly published on the same day as the first three editions, with the book selling more than 10,000 copies across four editions on that day alone.

18.

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The missing first edition (if imperfect) [Cameron [née Butt] (Lucy Lyttleton)] The History of Margaret Whyte; or, The life and death of a good child. Bath: Printed by and for S. Hazard, 1799, FIRST EDITION , lacking pp. 29-32, last leaf (advertisements) defective at upper outer corner, pp. [ii], 67, [3, advertisements], 12mo, stitched in original drab wrappers, lacking lower cover, upper cover stained and worn, title in manuscript, sound (Not in ESTC ) £1,500

LITERATURE

Apparently unrecorded, in spite of the confident date of 1799 for the first edition given

by ODNB . The earliest edition in COPAC is the third (same printer) of 1803, Bodley only. In fact, Margaret Whyte seems to be rare in any early edition, albeit that since Cameron’s second book, The Work House, 1802, books by her were attributed to the ‘Author of Margaret Whyte.’ No copy of a second edition is recorded; an 1815 edition is Morgan only, and so on until 1830, where six locations are recorded in OCLC . The earliest edition in the Osborne Collection (p. 867) is 1827 (Houlston, Wellington). An edition appeared in Philadelphia in 1830, in Notre Dame only in OCLC .

‘From her earliest years Lucy Lyttelton Butt had the advantage of constant exposure to a highly literary and intellectual society. Her father was among the close friends of Anna Seward, “the Swan of Lichfield”, a factor that possibly played a significant part in his daughter’s own career as a writer, which began in 1798 with the writing of The History of Margaret Whyte [at the age of 17] ... Works such as Mrs Cameron’s Margaret Whyte (1799) and her sister’s History of Little Henry and his Bearer (1814) both have, according to Margaret Nancy Cutt, a quality of detail and expression that anticipates Victorian fiction for children’ ( ODNB ). The work is signed with an initial L at the end.

The pair of missing leaves formed the centre of a gathering, and seem simply to have fallen out. The title-page states ‘in Blue Paper’ but if the surviving wrapper were ever that hue it has long since evaporated.

19.

Cervantes (Miguel de) El Zeloso Estremeno: The Jealous Estremaduran. A Novel. ... done from the Spanish, by J. Ozell. [Half-title: The Monthly Amusement. Numb. III. For June, 1709.] Printed for D. Midwinter, [1709,] one full-page engraving between preface and text, dampstain to inner margin, browned and a bit soiled, a few corners creased, pp. [iv], viii, [2], 66, 12mo, modern dark quarter calf, marbled boards, sound ( ESTC T59876) £2,000 The translator John Ozell (d. 1743) taught himself foreign languages while working as an accountant, and with those skills produced important versions of Boileau and the Iliad , among others. In April 1709 he began a monthly periodical publication dedicated to translations from ‘the best Spanish, French and Italian’ authors; it reached six volumes before folding. The issues, which were sold separately for one shilling, contained one work each – the series comprised three short novels by Cervantes, two plays by Moliere, and a collection of short stories about love.

This issue, the third in the series, contains the second translation into English of ‘El Zeloso Estremeno’, one of Cervantes’ Novelas Ejemplares (Exemplary Novels). The only earlier appearance was in a collection of 1640, translated by ‘Don Diego Puede-Ser’, about which Ozell remarks ‘the Language is so odd, that one might have guess’d it was turn’d by no English Man, ev’n tho’ the Title Page had not shewn it’ (Preface, p. i).

All the issues of Ozell’s periodical are understandably rare: this one is listed in five locations in ESTC (Birmingham Central, BL, Oxford, Huntington, Princeton), while the complete Monthly Amusement is listed only in Eton and Yale – two other individual issues (‘The Little Gypsy’ and the ‘Misanthrope’) are recorded in a handful of copies, while the other three issues are unrecorded separately in ESTC .

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20.

Cervantes (Miguel de) La Gitanilla: The Little Gypsie. A Novel. Written by Miguel de Cervants Saavedra. And done from the Spanish by J. Ozell.

Printed for D. Midwinter ... and B. Lintott ... and sold by J. Morphew ... [1709,] with woodcut vignette on title (Orpheus on a dolphin), and one engraved plate, half-title discarded, slightly browned, and slightly soiled in places, pp. [iv], 117, 12mo, original calf, corners worn, rebacked, new endpapers, good ( ESTC T59880, BL, Bodley and Yale only in ESTC , Eton and Yale for the complete series) £4,000 First edition in English of ‘La Gitanilla,’ one of Cervantes’ Exemplary Novels. The 1640 collection of Exemparie nouells included only 6 of them and not this one. Ozell was ‘lampooned as the epitome of the hack translator in both Pope’s Dunciad and Jonathan Swift’s ‘Introduction to Polite Conversation’. Yet although he was mocked for his literary incompetence, his translations were not only good by the standards of the time, but also useful to Pope’ ( ODNB ).

ESTC calls for 8 preliminary pages, and so must be counting the plate in the pagination;

the missing half title – which gives the series title: ‘The Monthly Amusement. Numb. I. For April 1709’ – would account for the other 2-page discrepancy from this copy.

21.

Chaucer (Geoffrey) The Works ... Compared with the Former Editions, and many valuable MSS . Out of which, Three Tales are added which were never before Printed;

by John Urry, Student of Christ-Church, Oxon. Deceased. Printed for Bernard Lintot.

1721, FIRST URRY EDITION , engraved frontispiece portrait of Urry, fine portrait of Chaucer, title vignette and 27 excellent head-piece vignettes of the pilgrims, just a little light browning, pp. [lii], 626, 81, [1], folio, nineteenth-century diced Russia, boards panelled and framed in blind, with a gilt roll tool border, neatly rebacked preserving original spine, decorated in gilt and blind, corners renewed, old leather somewhat scratched and rubbed around the edges, bookplate of R. St John Mathews and pencil inscription of J. Henry Stormont (dated 1901) to endpapers, good ( ESTC T106027) £1,400 Left unfinished at Urry’s death, continued by Thomas Ainsworth, and finally revised and completed by Timothy Thomas, with a Life by John Dart. Thomas Tyrwhitt, in the preface to his edition of 1775-78, declared that Urry’s edition ‘should never be opened by any one for the purpose of reading Chaucer,’ while according to DNB it is ‘the worst ever prepared on account of Urry’s unpardonable habit of lengthening and shortening Chaucer’s words, and even introducing words of his own to suit his views of the metre.’ However, the new entry in the ODNB gives a more balanced view: as well as being the first edition printed in Roman type, it ‘is the first edition of Chaucer for nearly a hundred and fifty years to consult any manuscripts and is the first since that of William Thynne in 1534 to seek systematically to assemble a substantial number of manuscripts to establish his text. It is also the first edition to offer descriptions of the manuscripts of Chaucer’s works, and the first to print texts of ‘Gamelyn’ and ‘The Tale of Beryn’, works ascribed to, but not by, Chaucer’.

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LITERATURE

22.

‘Cheap Repository.’ The Distressed Mother. Printed and sold by John Marshall, and may be had of the Booksellers, Newsmen, and Hawkers, in Town and Country. [c.

1795,] with a woodcut illustration on title signed Lee (almost certainly John Lee fl.

1794-1804), second 2 leaves cut close at fore-edge, with loss of about half of each of the initial letters on each line on the verso of the last, a little water-stained, pp. 8, 8vo, disbound, good ( ESTC T300760; Spinney 133) £400 The only recorded copy of this in ESTC is at Bodley. After the imprint we read ‘Great Allowance to Shopkeepers and Hawkers. Price One Halfpenny. Or 2s. 3d. per 100.-1s 3d. for 50.-9d. for 25.’ The mother had a son who regarded her admonitions as to cleanliness as nothing but a scold. He was much addicted to fishing, but one day fell into the river, and was carried home as dead. But the mother’s devotion to the boy, and faith in God, revived the child. Lee ‘was a principal member of the London school of wood-engraving which was formed in response to the success of Thomas Bewick’s Newcastle-based revival of this medium, and his finest work has been compared to that of Bewick; indeed, in his Treatise on Wood Engraving (1839) John Jackson judged Lee to be the “best of the London engravers” (Jackson, 627). Although it was designed for the cheap end of the market, his best work was a series of ‘black-line cuts’ to decorate the pages of The Cheap Repository (1794-8), a compilation of religious and moral tracts that was published by J. Marshall, in London, and S. Hazard, in Bath’ ( ODNB ).

23.

Cibber (Colley) The Lady’s Lecture, a Theatrical Dialogue, between Sir Charles Easy and his mariageable [sic] daughter. Being an Attempt to engage Obedience by Filial Liberty: and to give the Maiden conduct of virtue, chearfulness. Printed: and Sold by W. Lewis 1748, a touch of light browning, pp. [xx], 43, [1], 8vo, later half brown sheep, marbled boards, spine lettered vertically in gilt, rubbed, good ( ESTC T37487) £225 ‘The Lady’s Lecture was very clearly Cibber’s reply to the first instalment of Clarissa , published in the closing weeks of the previous year ... the two writers had privately debated the theme of paternal authority in the novel, taking very different positions; and Richardson can have been little enamoured of this more public attempt to “reconcile”, in 43 pages, a problem he had himself insisted, in two large volumes, to be fraught with difficulty and contradition’ (Keymer, Richardson’s ‘Clarissa’ and the Eighteenth-Century Reader, 1992).

24.

Association copy Clough (Arthur Hugh) Poems. With a Memoir [by F.T. Palgrave]. Cambridge: Macmillan, 1862, FIRST COLLECTED EDITION , pp.xxvii, 259, 16 advertisements, 8vo, original green honeycomb cloth, gilt, minor wear to the extremities, good (Scott A13; Tinker 646) £450 Inscribed on the brown front free endpaper in the month of publication to ‘The Rev’d R.P. Graves with A J Clough’s kind regards July 1862’.

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Anne Jemima Clough, the poet’s sister, was the first principal of Newnham College Cambridge and a pioneer of women’s education. Robert Perceval Graves (1810-93), scion of a family that ‘had for several generations contributed with distinction to scholarship and to the learned professions in Ireland’ was at the time curate of Windermere and hence neighbour to Anne Clough: the poet, Arthur Hugh, had died in 1861. Graves wrote a Memoir of Wordsworth and a Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton, these two enjoying a well-known friendship. Graves was also the grand-uncle of the poet Robert Graves, so the volume radiates considerable poetical associations.

25.

(Coleridge.) [CHATTERTON (Thomas)] Poems, supposed to have been written at Bristol, by Thomas Rowley, and others, in the fifteenth century. Cambridge: B. Flower, for the editor, 1794, FIRST PRINTING of ‘Monody on the Death of Chatterton’, engraved half-title and one other engraved plate (facing p. 199), a little light spotting, pp. xxix, [3], 329, [1], 8vo, contemporary polished calf, spine with five raised bands, green morocco lettering-piece in second compartment, the remainder with blind and gilt tooling, marbled edges and endpapers, rubbed, head of spine and joints a little worn but joints strong, good ( ESTC T75380) £350 The fifth edition of Chatterton’s ‘medieval’ poems, written under the pseudonym ‘Thomas Rowley’; although he was exposed early some continued to champion their authenticity.

The preface to this edition acknowledges the ongoing debate without taking sides, and includes a prescient plea not to lose the quality of the poetry amongst the authorship controversy. The most notable inclusion of this edition, however, is Coleridge’s ‘Monody on the Death of Chatterton’, first printed here; this was his second appearance in print and his first published poem. It remained of great importance to him: he continued to redevelop and rewrite the poem for the next forty years, and its publication history includes some six different major versions.

26.

Coleridge (Samuel Taylor) Christabel &c. Third Edition. For John Murray...by William Bulmer. 1816, half-titles discarded in the first and third title, the second and fourth with ownership inscriptions on the titles, pp. vii, [i], 64, 8vo, [bound with]: Coleridge (Samuel Taylor) Zapolya: a Christmas Tale. Rest Fenner, 1817, FIRST EDITION , half-title, pp. [viii], 128, [and:] Cornwall (Barry) Mirandola, second edition. John Warren, 1821, pp.iii-viii, 110, [and:] Byron (George Gordon, Lord) Manfred. John Murray, 1817, FIRST EDITION , ?second issue, half-title, pp. 80, [4], slightly later polished mid-brown calf, the backstrip elaborately panelled in gilt with repeated tooling, gilt lettering, sides with triple gilt fillet borders, marbled edges and endpapers, bookplate of Baron Northwick, fine (Second work: Tinker 700; fourth: Wise I 120; cf. Randolph 66) £500 A handsomely bound collection of four titles, including a first edition of Coleridge’s Zapolya . There has been much analysis of the variants of Byron’s Manfred. This copy tallies with Wise’s second issue, with no quotation on the title and the imprint on the verso of the half-title.

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27.

Coleridge (Samuel Taylor) Sibylline Leaves: A Collection of Poems. Rest Fenner: 1817, FIRST EDITION , complete with half-title and errata leaf present, a tiny bit of spotting, errata corrected in pencil in a contemporary hand, two sets of verses on fly-leaf with signature of one Robert Martin (see below), pp. [iv], x, [ii], 303, [1], 8vo, uncut in the original boards, rebacked preserving most of original spine and printed paper label, corners worn and covers a little rubbed, good (Tinker 697; £850 Wise 45) One of Coleridge’s principal collections, including ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ in its final, heavily revised, and most familiar, form, published under his name for the first time. Also including 8 previously unpublished poems, and others, such as ‘Dejection: An Ode,’ also heavily revised. Each gathering is signed ‘Vol. II.’: it had originally been intended to publish the volume simultaneously with ‘Biographia Literaria’ but this was not done. The front flyleaf bears two sets of verses, not unaccomplished and in quite a Coleridgean strain, but we have not been able to identify the Robert Martin who wrote them.

28.

Coleridge (Samuel Taylor), Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd. Poems by S.T. Coleridge. Second edition. To which are now added poems by Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd. [Bristol:] Printed by N. Biggs. 1797, light browning, a small repair to corner of title, without the errata slip sometimes found after the title, pp. xx, 278, 8vo, early twentieth-century green morocco by Wood, boards with a gilt fillet border and clover cornerpieces in Art Nouveau style, sometime experly rebacked preserving original backstrip, this with five raised bands, each compartment with a gilt fillet border, second and third gilt-lettered direct, the rest with central leaf tools, morocco turn-ins, marbled endpapers, t.e.g., others untrimmed, large bookplate of Francis £750 Fels Rosenbaum, very good ( ESTC N11843; Wise 11) Called the second edition of Coleridge’s Poems, this book was substantially altered from the first of 1796. Coleridge removed around a third of his own poems and added other, previously unpublished ones – so that this includes the first printing of ‘Ode on the Departing Year’, among others – as well as making room for a number new poems by Lamb and Lloyd. Lamb’s first appearance in print had been a few uncredited poems in the first edition, and thus this is also the very first book in which Lamb’s name appears on the title.

29.

Collins (William) The Poetical Works... enriched with Elegant Engravings.

Printed by T. Bensley, for E. Harding, 1798, 20 engravings within the text, light browning in places, pp. xiv, 165, [1], 8vo, contemporary flame calf, spine divided by gilt rolls, black morocco lettering piece in second compartment, the remainder with central lyre tools, marbled endpapers, a bit rubbed and marked, good ( ESTC T125340) £100 An attractive edition of Collins’ works, printed for the engraver and publisher Edward Harding, who also contributed some of the illustrations.

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30.

One of the Grolier ‘One Hundred Books Famous in English Literature’ Congreve (William) The Way of the World. A Comedy. As it is acted at the Theatre in Lincoln’sInn-Fields, by His Majesty’s Servants. Printed for Jacob Tonson, 1700, FIRST EDITION , with half-title, advertisement on verso of last leaf, variant with catchword ‘Enter’ on p. 80, small hole in E3 with the loss of two letters on either side of leaf and three more touched on verso (sense recoverable), a trifle browned, light staining to upper margin, pp. [xii], 89, [3], 4to, half blue morocco (presumably for Rosenbach), spine gilt lettered longitudinally between gilt panels at either end, spine gilt, small leather book-label on front pastedown with monogram SSB , offset onto foot of a label ‘From the Rosenbach Collection’ with a summary description, later Quaritch collation note inside back cover, good ( ESTC R838; Grolier 100 English 37 (not calling for halftitle)) £2,500 Congreve’s last play, a comparative failure when first performed, but now considered his masterpiece. ‘The Way of the World has some of the most brilliant conversation in our literature, and some of the most devastating wit’ (James Sutherland in OHEL ).

31.

Conrad (Joseph) An Outcast of the Islands. Unwin. 1896, FIRST EDITION , title-page printed in black and red, stitching a little strained, pp. [viii], 392, cr.8vo., orig. dark green vertical fine-ribbed cloth, lightly faded backstrip gilt lettered within gilt frames, rear hinge a little weak, ownership signature on front free endpaper, later owner’s notes on rear free endpaper, free endpapers a little browned, book ticket, t.e.g., others untrimmed, very good (Smith 2 ; Wise p.2) £750 The author’s second book, preceded only by Almayer’s Folly.

32.

Conrad (Joseph) Chance. Methuen. 1914 (see note), FIRST EDITION , the title-leaf a cancel, quotation marks lacking after ‘Narcissus’, some foxing to preliminaries and less so to final few leaves, and also to edges, pp. viii, 408, 8 (Publisher’s List dated Autumn 1913), cr.8vo., original mid green cloth, backstrip gilt lettered and decorated with scallop and coral motif, publisher’s name imprinted ‘METHUEN’ at the tail of the backstrip, book-ticket, tail edges roughtrimmed, good (Smith 18) £300 Chance has an interesting printing history. The book was initially published with titlepages dated 1913. However, issuance was delayed by a binder’s strike until 1914, and as a consequence it was decided that title-leaves be reprinted with the date 1914, thus forming a second issue of the first edition, the title-leaves dated 1914 being pasted onto the stubs where the original 1913 title-leaves had been excised. A further issue (the third issue) of the first edition with the entire signature, including reprinting of the title-leaf, was published later. Only a few copies exist with title-page dated 1913.

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33.

A Baskerville Characteristicks in a choice contemporary binding Cooper (Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury) Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times. In Three Volumes. The Fifth Edition. Birmingham: Printed by John Baskerville, 1773, with various copperplate vignettes on title-pages and Treatise sectional titles or as headpieces, without the Errata leaf, some offsetting from vignettes, occasional minor browning or spotting, pp. [iv], 410, [48, Index], Royal 8vo, contemporary red Turkey, gilt roll tooled borders on sides incorporating a distinctive bee, flat spines richly gilt with a semé of drawer handles, dots and pyramids, twin green lettering pieces, very minor shelf wear, very good (Gaskell 49) £3,500 A binding of the highest quality, both in material and decoration.

There are contemporary cost notes in vol. i, that at the front partially erased. These notes suggest that the binding was specially commisioned, rather than it being a product of the Baskerville shop.

‘Characteristicks was a complex as well as composite book, a work of philosophy in a polite mode. It aimed centrally to convey a notion of philosophy as a form of ethical training... He opposed two traits of modern philosophy in particular: first, philosophical egoism, the postulate that the solitary individual was the starting point for social and ethical thinking; and, second, nominalism, the notion that ethical and other standards were largely conventional in character. In addition he found modern philosophy too dry, abstract, and demonstrative to address the moral formation of gentlemen... The work’s composite organization and discursive style explain why historians of both philosophy and political discourse have tended to neglect it. While Characteristicks was a collection its composite and digressive character was also a matter of design. The miscellanies, written specifically for the collection, were the most digressive of all the components and declared the cognitive value of the lack of system. This lack supported the philosophical, political, and cultural goals of the work by providing a textual embodiment of diversity, open-endedness, and freedom’ ( ODNB ).

For the second edition Shaftesbury commissioned a set of engravings to ‘illustrate emblematically the philosophical and political meanings of the text. These were based on drawings which Shaftesbury had commissioned from Henry Trench, an Irish artist based in Rome, and had carried out in London by the distinguished Huguenot engraver Simon Gribelin. These fine graphics, in addition to greater care in the layout and typography, made the second edition of Characteristicks (1714) a splendid piece of book art’ ( ODNB ).

Regarding the last statement, this is truer still of the Baskerville edition, all the more glorious in a binding such as this.

34.

Cooper (James Fenimore) Séjour d’une Famille Américaine en France, suivi d’une excursion sur le Rhin, et d’une nouvelle excursion en Suisse. Tome Premier [- Troisième]. Paris: Charles Gosselin and W. Coquebert, 1838, 3 vols. in 1, a little scattered foxing, pp. [iv], 192; [iv], 227; [iv], 240, small 8vo, contemporary half

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calf spines gilt, yellow edges, very good (WorldCat records a handful of copies in Continental libraries, but none in the US) £200 This seems to be the first separate, if not indeed the very first, translation into French of A Residence in Europe, 1836: a French version was also included in the Cabunet Litéraire, or Oeuvres, in Paris in the same year, translated by Auguste-Jean-Baptiste Defauconpret.

The anonymous translator here prefixes a note to the effect that he had initially wanted to refute in Notes the authors errors and misconceptions following the Revolution of July, but decided in the end that the reader should be left to appreciate the peculiar opinions of a foreigner, citizen of a republic and an admirer of Lafayette. Cooper was more than just an admirer of Lafayette, he was a political ally and friend. At the end of this work we leave Cooper and Lafayette discussing slavery, and the likelihood or otherwise of the fate of the division of the American Union.

From the library of Marie Caroline, Duchesse de Berry (1798-1870), without a book-plate but in a characteristic and attractive binding.

35.

Cooper (James Fenimore) Souvenirs d’Europe. France. Tome Premier [Second].

Brussels: Société Typographique Belge, 1838, 2 vols. in 1, occasional foxing, pp.

262; 254, 8vo, contemporary half calf, spine gilt, yellow edges, very good (A few Continental copies in WorldCat, but only the American Antiquarian Society in £200 the US) A translation of Gleanings in Europe, 1837. The first three letters describe the journey over the Atlantic and a short stay in England. In Paris, the visit of Sir Walter Scott is described (the two authors joked about how they were lionised), there is an excursion with Lafayette, an interview with Canning, &c, &c. For Cooper’s reception on the Continent see Willard Thorp, ‘Cooper Beyond America’, published in New York History, Vol. 35, No. 4 (October, 1954), pp. 522-539 (Special Issue. James Fenimore Cooper: A Re-Appraisal).

From the library of Marie Caroline, Duchesse de Berry (1798-1870), without a book-plate but in a characteristic and attractive binding.

36.

Cooper (James Fenimore) Le Paquebot Americain, ou la Chasse. Traduit de l’Anglais par A.-J.B. Defauconpret. Tome Premier [-Quatrième]. [together with:] Eve Effingham, ou l’Amerique, suite du Paquebot Americain.

Traduit ... par A.-J.B. Defauconpret. Tome Premier [-Quatrième]. Paris: Charles Gosselin and W. Coquebert, and Paris: Charles Gosselin, 1838-39, both 4 vols. in 2, together 4 vols., occasional foxing, pp. [i], 231; [i], 241; [i], 269; [i], 264: [i], 237; [i], 235; [i], 222; [i], 204, 8vo, contemporary half calf, spines gilt, yellow edges, very good (No US copies located in WorldCat) £450 Translations of Homeward Bound and Home as Found , both 1838.

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LITERATURE

From the library of Marie Caroline, Duchesse de Berry (1798-1870), without a book-plate but in a characteristic and attractive binding.

37.

Cowper (William) Poems. In two volumes. Volume I [-II]. The third edition.

Printed for J. Johnson, 1787, sig. B of vol. ii in first state, occasional minor foxing, pp. [iv], 367; [vii], 359, [1, Proposals for printing by subscription Cowper’s Homer], 8vo, contemporary polished calf, gilt ruled compartments on spines, green lettering and numbering pieces, the latter being oval, circular label of Trinity College Library on upper covers, traces of sellotape at foot of spines, slightly worn, good (Russell 73) £250 Although ex-library (with no stamps), an attractive set. The first edition of vol. i was published separately in 1782 as Poems. The first edition of vol. ii was published separately in 1785 as The Task : it includes ‘John Gilpin’.

38.

An excessively rare printing of The Negroe’s Complaint [Cowper (William)] The Negroe’s Complaint.

[London, c. 1790,] foxed and spotted, a short handling tear from one side through two words of text (no loss), ff. [2], [tipped in to:] Cowper (William) The Poetical Works with Notes and a Memoir by John Bruce [Vol. i only]. Bell and Daldy, 1865, 8vo, original red cloth, later typed paper label to spine, worn and shaken, several sections and leaves coming loose, several letters and other ephemera tipped in (see below), preserved in a red cloth folding box with a large black lettering piece on the upper cover, sound ( ESTC N37919) £6,000 A very rare, and possibly the first, or more likely the first separate, printing of William Cowper’s important abolitionist poem, ‘The Negro’s Complaint’. ESTC locates copies in the National Archive and NYPL only, assigning a date of ‘1790?’ on the basis that the copy in the National Archives is ‘among materials from the late 1780s and early 1790s’. The first dated printing was a broadside of 1791, and the only earlier record in ESTC is a pamphlet titled ‘A subject for conversation and reflection at the tea table’, which contains this poem and extracts from ‘Charity’ and ‘The Task’, and is dated c.1788 by Russell. A close comparison of the text of this version with the texts of the 1791 dated broadside and the c.1788 undated pamphlet reveal a number of details in formatting, punctuation, and word choice that the pamphlet shares with this broadside, but that are different in the 1791 and subsequent printings (including all modern editions).

According to one of Cowper’s letters, no printed version of the poem existed before July 1788. Given the nature of popular broadsides and the immediate and wide spread of Cowper’s abolitionist ballads, added to the anonymous nature of this production, it seems

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impossible to firmly establish its position in the bibliography of the poem, but the textual comparison certainly suggests that it predates the earliest dated versions, making it at least the first separate printing. Possibly it was copied (pirated?) from the pamphlet, but it is also not impossible for it to have preceded that version, given that most of the dates involved are merely educated guesses.

Also loosely inserted or tipped in are two letters from John Bruce, the editor, to J.W. Rix. The latter had in his possession a letter from John Johnson (Cowper’s cousin) to Mr. Plowman, a longish letter arising from Johnson’s happening to mention to Cowper in 1792, that Mr. Plowman ‘had adorned his garden with a statue of Achilles, [hearing which] Cowper expressed his wish that his garden could possess an ornament so germane to his recent labours in the translation of Homer’. Johnson’s letter solicits the gift of the statue from Mr. Plowman. The gift was not made, although Plowman did provide Cowper with a bust of Homer.

39.

Crabbe (George) Tales of the Hall. [2 volumes.] John Murray. 1819, FIRST EDITION , half-titles discarded, ownership signature of A. Webb and initials ‘P. W.’ on the front free endpaper, pp. iii-xxiv, 326; iii-viii, 353, [2], (publisher’s advert), 8vo, contemporary polished calf, backstrips with darker banding, panels in gilt, central gilt palmettes and gilt lettering, the sides with triple gilt fillet and blind borders, gauffered edges, rubbed, upper joint of vol. i just starting to crack but still strong, ex libris of R. W. Chapman, good £120 After rather a checkered career in other fields Crabbe’s poetry found a distinct audience.

Crabbe met and impressed John Murray while visiting London in 1817 and ‘on 8 December 1818 Murray agreed to pay Crabbe £3000 for all of his copyrights and his new manuscript Tales of the Hall, published on 3 July 1819. These twenty-two tales are organized around the frame device of two brothers reunited at the hall of the elder brother after many years of separation. They act as the narrators throughout a poignant collection of poems dealing with love and marriage among characters drawn from the gentry. A new element in the development of Crabbe’s verse tales is the interaction between George and Richard, the two narrators, and the situations and characters in the poems, causing the brothers to gain insight into each other and themselves’ ( ODNB ).

40.

41.

18

De Quincey (Thomas) The Works of including all his Contributions to Periodiacl Literature. Fourth Edition. In Sixteen Volumes. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, MDCCCLXVIII (Reprinted 1883), with plates and a few illustrations in the text, 8vo, contemporary half dark brown morocco, spines gilt in compartments, marbled edges matching the boards, spines faded, good £800 Cooke’s Edition Defoe (Daniel) The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Embellished with Engravings. [Three volumes.] Printed for C. Cooke, [1793], first Cooke edition, 6 engraved plates (3 each in vols. i and ii, none in iii), woodcut device on title-pages and woodcut tail-piece, last page of vol. ii with two small sections of the text adhering to the fly-leaf, pp. 199; 212; iv, [5-] 198, plus final blank (onto recto of which text of p. 198 offset), 12mo, original tree sheep, gilt ruled compartments on

LITERATURE

spine, red lettering piece on vol. iii, missing from i and ii, numbered in gilt direct, joints cracked, corners worn, ownership inscription in each vol. of F. Royse dated 1793, fair ( ESTC T72293) £250 A charming little edition, and in spite of the faults enumerated above, a pleasant copy.

ESTC gives the date on the strength of that at the head of the plates: ‘Cooke’s Edition of select British Novels’, which are dated 1793, an assumption corroborated by the ownership inscription here. The plates themselves are most attractive: the image within an oval with a decorative background and legend in a cartouche.

42.

A Cooper’s Coopers Hill, annotated by Locke’s friend Tyrrell Denham (John) Coopers Hill. Written in the yeare 1640. Now printed from a perfect Copy; and a corrected Impression. For Humphrey Moseley. 1655, FIRST AUTHORIZED EDITION , James Tyrell’s copy, signed on the original blank leaf at the end and with his annotations, minor paper flaw to the margin of the title, pp. [iv], 18, small 4to., modern half pebble-grain dark blue morocco, the backstrip lettered vertically in gilt, book-label inside front cover of the Markree Library, noting it as having been re-arranged by Bryan Cooper in 1913, fine (Wing D996; Hayward 107; £3,500 Grolier 257; ESTC R29709) ‘In Cooper’s Hill the prospect from a Thames-side viewpoint at Egham is made the occasion for historical and moral reflections on kingship at a critical juncture in English history. The poem, which shows the influence of some then unprinted verses

by Waller, was praised by fellow poet Robert Herrick and pronounced by John Dryden ‘the exact Standard of good Writing’ (Wood, Ath. Oxon., 3.825). As an early instance of the topographical reflective genre and in its development of the closed couplet it looks forward to the Augustans. It was progressively revised, translated into Latin in 1667 by Moses Pengry, and long remained one of the most famous poems in the language’ ( ODNB ).

This is a particularly interesting copy, signed at the end: ‘ex libris Jacobi Tyrrell. A.D. 1662’. Tyrrell was at the time a student of twenty at Queen’s College, Oxford, where he received his MA in the following year. Tyrrell was one of the closest friends of the philosopher John Locke. They met at Oxford in 1658. Sixty-seven letters between them survive, from 1677 to 1704; in these, Tyrrell took the nickname Musidore and Locke Carmelin. Tyrrell went on to become a historian of note. His fine library remained intact at the family home, Shotover House, until 1855. He has made a fair number of significant notes to this copy, including some original emendations, a few textual changes apparently based on the collected edition of 1668, and a number of general comments and identifications. A few notes are in what appears to be a different hand but is in fact Tyrell himself writing later in life; he read the poem very carefully, and assesses it in his own written work, calling it an ‘Excellent Poem...which I rather take notice of... Both the verses and Sence are so good, that perhaps it may refresh the Reader tired with Reading so much drie Arguments’ ( Patriarcha non Monarcha , 1681).

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Bryan Ricco Cooper (1884–1930), politician in Ireland and army officer, was prominent in Irish literary circles, and had plays produced at the Abbey. Markree Castle is in Co. Sligo.

43.

A Dorrit’s Dorrit Dickens (Charles) Little Dorrit. Bradbury and Evans, 1857, FIRST BOOKFORM EDITION , with engraved frontispiece and title and 38 etched plates by H.K. Browne, plates generally somewhat spotted, as usual, and with dampstains in the lower outer corners (plates only, not the text), pp. xiv, 625, 8vo, contemporary half green calf, spine richly gilt, red lettering piece, minor shelf wear, contemporary ownership inscription on flyleaf of C.J. Hallam, an early 20th-century M.A. Hallam below this, and below this the inscription of Dorrit W. Fountain, Christmas 1922, good £450 It is understandable that the bookform editions of Dickens in the original cloth should in recent times have been the subject of bibliophilic enthusiasm, but it is worth bearing in mind that copies such as this, in workaday calf, are probably the form in which most contemporary readers aspired to have their favorite novels, and which, besides, are worthy Victorian artefacts. ‘“Do you speak of Little Dorrit?” “Why yes of course,” returned Flora; “and of all the strangest names I ever heard the strangest, like a place down in the country with a turnpike, or a favourite pony or a puppy or a bird or something from a seed-shop to be put in a garden or a flower-pot and come up speckled”’ (Book I Ch. 23)

44.

Douglas (Gavin) The Poetical Works of. With Memoir, Notes, and a Glossary by John Small. Volume First [-Fourth]. Edinburgh: William Paterson, 1874, titles printed in red and black, with facsimiles and plates, pp. clxxii, 154; [i], 318, [1]; [iv], 373, [1]; [iv], 356, 8vo, contemporary polished calf by Andrew Grieve of Edinburgh, sides gilt panelled with pairs of double fillets with fleurons in the corners, spines gilt in compartments, twin red lettering pieces, top edges gilt, others uncut and unopened, spines a trifle faded, fore-edges lightly spotted, excellent £600 A beautiful copy of the the first edition of Small’s rescension and biography (Memoir) of Douglas. The book is printed to the highest standards of Victorian Edinburgh work, by Turnbull and Spears, and the binding is the acme of the period’s taste, style and craftsmanship. Small succeeded his father as sub-librarian to the University of Edinburgh, in 1847, the year he graduated, becoming Librarian 1854 and continuing in the post almost until his death in 1886.

45.

20

Eliot (George) Adam Bede. In Three Volumes. Vol. I [-III]. Edinburgh and London, William Blackwood and Sons, 1859, FIRST EDITION , complete with half-titles and advertisements at the end of vol. iii, some foxing mainly to the first 2 or 3 gatherings

LITERATURE

at either end, F4 in vol. ii with a short tear in the lower margin, pp. [viii], 325; [viii], 374; [viii], 333, 16 (ads.), 8vo, original tan wavy-grained cloth by Edmonds & Remnants, with their ticket, sides with elaborate blind blocked borders, spines lettered in gilt, rebacked preserving the original spines, traces of circulating library labels, on the front of vol. i and inverted on the lower covers (i.e they have been swopped), sound (Sadleir 812; Wolff 2056) £700 ‘Adam Bede at once placed its author in the front rank of contemporary literature. The fact that ... [it] would be the most formidable rival to any later productions induced her to spare no pains in the effort to mantain her standard’ ( ODNB ).

46.

Eliot (George) Daniel Deronda. [Four volumes.] Blackwood & Sons, 1876, FIRST

EDITION , FIRST ISSUE , BOUND FROM THE PARTS , wrappers and advertisements discarded

but the two errata slips present, title-page of vol. i trimmed close to the lowest line of text (‘All rights reserved’), pp. [iv], 367; [iv], 364; [iv], 393; [iv], 367, 8vo, contemporary half green calf over marbled boards by J. & J.P. Edmond & Spark of Aberdeen, spines with five raised bands decorated with gilt rolls, red morocco lettering pieces, spines uniformly sunned, a touch of rubbing at extremities, bookplate of Thomas Gladstone, very good (Baker & Ross A11.1.a1) £500 The first edition of Daniel Deronda was issued in eight parts, but 384 sets of sheets were held back for sale bound as four volumes; Baker & Ross assert first that a bound set from the parts would be indistinguishable from a bound set of the book-form issue, and then go on to state that the two errata were corrected for the latter. This set, with the errata uncorrected, must therefore be bound from the parts.

Edmond & Spark of Aberdeen bound a number of volumes in this style for Thomas Gladstone, 2nd Baronet (1804-1889), the eldest brother of William Ewart Gladstone and the inheritor of Fasque House on the death of their father in 1851.

47.

A major literary figure in Sheffield Elliott (Ebenezer) The Poetical Works. In Three Volumes. B. Steill. 1844, pp. iiivii, [i], 11-284; [iv], 280; xiii, [i], [vi], 13-297, 8vo, original green cloth embossed with arabesques, backstrips similar and with gilt lettering, yellow endpapers, near fine £350 Elliott became best-known as the Corn Law Rhymer, a title which identifies his most widely read work. The majority of his poems ‘show Elliott as a pragmatic, propagandistic, newspaper-taught anti-religionist, especially hostile to Methodists.... Still, it was his protest verse, favourably reviewed by Thomas Carlyle, Bulwer-Lytton, the Howitts, W. J. Fox, and Geraldine Jewsbury, which bolstered his reputation as poet of the poor, even after he had accumulated substantial wealth.... He never ceased...to admonish the upper and middle ranks against class indifference and inhumanity toward Britain’s poor’ ( ODNB ).

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48.

Evelyn (John) Memoirs, illustrative of the Life and Writings of John Evelyn, Esq. F.R.S. ... Edited by William Bray. Second Edition. Printed for Henry Colburn. 1819, engraved frontispiece portraits, folding engraved map, 9 plates, double-page pedigree, single wormholes through blank margins and at the end of vol. i, pp. xxviii, 671; vi, [ii], 342, [2], 336, 4to, contemporary half calf, gilt panelled backstrip with wide raised bands decorated with gilt fillets, gilt lettering, marbled sides, corners knocked, good (Keynes 133) £250 This second (and best) of Bray’s editions of Evelyn’s famous diaries has three additional plates.

49.

(Farces/Afterpieces/Masques/Librettos.) WENMAN (Joseph, publisher) A nonce collection of 54 pieces. Printed for J. Wenman, 1777-79, 54 pieces, varying in length from 2 to 10 pages, lacking at least one advertisement leaf, and possibly a plate or two, some water- and other staining, 8vo, contemporary marbled boards rebacked in calf, old lettering piece reading ‘Farces’, contemporary bookplate of the Rev. R./P. Packwood, twentieth-century bookplate of L.K. Elmirst with stamp of Dartington Hall on flyleaf, good £750 A varied collection with a contemporary list of the contents on a flyleaf. These Entertainments or Afterpieces were a regular feature of the eighteenth-century theatrical evening, performed between acts of the mainpiece, and afterwards, with complete disregard to appropriateness to the mainpiece. Among authors represented here are Dodsley, Foote, Carey, Morrell, Congreve, Gay, Mendez, Garrick, Fielding, &c. The music of Handel accompanied many of the pieces.

50.

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Fielding (Henry) The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. In Six Volumes ... Printed for A. Millar.

1749, FIRST EDITION , 3 wood engraved tail-pieces, errata leaf present in vol. i (see note), gathering E in vol. i misbound with pp. 81-88 between 92 and 93, final blanks present in vols. i and iii, occasional slight browning, and the odd minor stain here and there, 4 leaves misbound within gathering E in vol. i, textblock in 2 vols. cracked, with corresponding cracks in spine of binding, and a similar tendency in all vols., pp. lxii, [i, Errata],

LITERATURE

214, [2, blank]; [i], 324; [i], 324; [i], 370 plus final blank leaf; [i], 312; [i], 294; [i], 304, 12mo, contemporary (publisher’s) sprinkled calf, new red lettering pieces, joints cracked but cord firm, hinge of vol. vi invisibly reinforced, various bookplates and inscriptions of the Farquhars of Gilmilnescroft (Ayrshire), sound (Cross Vol. 2, pp. 117-22 and Vol. 3, pp. 316-17; Jensen, ‘Proposals for a Definitive Edition…’, The Library, 4th Ser., Vol. XVIII, p. 314 et seq.; Rothschild 850) £5,500 Fielding’s masterpiece, widely regarded as the greatest English novel of the eighteenth century. The question of cancelled leaves in this novel has exercised bibliographers for decades, but Hugh Amory’s article in Harvard Library Bulletin (Volume 25, 1977) confirms that the cancellans usually number twenty-four (twelve single leaves plus the whole of signature O in volume three). The numerous errors which occurred in the text are a result of its hasty printing; demand for the novel forced publisher and author into print before they were properly ready. The fact that volume six, which contains some of the most glaring errors, is not included in the errata suggests that not only was Millar unable to bind fast enough to keep up with demand, but also that he did not wait for either proof readers or Fielding to read the last volume.

The entire first edition of 2,000 copies was immediately bought up by the London trade, necessitating a second edition very quickly. Both Cross and Jensen support the view that the second edition was in hand at about the same time as the sixth volume of the first edition went to press. The latter goes further and suggests that the second edition may even have been printed before publication of the first. The most obvious difference is that the errata leaf in volume one is omitted and the re-spaced Contents extends into the page which it formerly occupied. Cross concludes that ‘Tom Jones, as the novel [first] appeared in February, is a most rare book.’

51.

[Foote (Samuel)] A Trip to Calais; a Medley Maritime sketch: being the poetical prosaical production of Timothy Timbertoe, Esq. Dedicated to a Duchess. Printed for the author, and sold by J. Bew, 1775, FIRST EDITION , somewhat browned, 8 leaves reinforced at inner margins, pp. [i], ii, 60, 8vo, modern calf backed boards, signature of John Munnings at head of title ( ESTC T103856) £750 This joyous squib is not to be confused with Foote’s comedy with the same title. It recounts a jolly excursion of a group of friends intent on pleasure, eating, drinking and signing songs. The only reference to Foote’s play comes towards the end, when another party of Englishmen join up with our heroes in Calais, and are asked for the latest news, one query being whether the play was out yet. The answer ‘No; it was stopped by the Duchess of Kingston.’ The play was ‘an overt attack on Elizabeth Chudleigh, duchess of Kingston, an influential figure who was currently facing trial on charges of bigamy. Foote dramatized Chudleigh as Lady Crocodile, but the lord chamberlain rejected his play during the summer of 1775. The feud between Foote and the duchess heated up as Foote first threatened to publish the play, then rejected a bribe from her, and later claimed he had lost £3000 by the work’s suppression’ ( ODNB ). There follows some discussion of ‘this great author’s writings.’

Just before this episode there is some political talk. ‘American matters were the chief camp of conversation, and some people looked upon the Yankees [as] a ridiculous rout of rebellious rascals, while others thought them an innocent and injured set of provoked provincials.’ ESTC records only BL, Cambridge and Rylands in the UK, though more in America.

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52.

[Forde (Emanuel)] The Famous History of Montelion, Knight of the Oracle. Son to the true Mirrour of Princes, the most renowned Persicles, King of Assyria: shewing his strange birth, unfortunate love, perilous adventures in arms; and how he came to the Knowledge of his Royal Parents. Interlaced with Variety of Pleasant and Delightful Discourse. Printed for W. Thackeray, and E. Tracey, at the Three Bibles, on London-Bridge, 1695, title within border of woodcut printer’s ornaments, with a woodcut frontispiece (see below), text in black letter, severely browned for the most part, tear in one leaf entering text but without loss, pp. [viii, including frontispiece leaf], 170, 4to, modern calf backed boards, sound (Wing F1531; ESTC R29526, 3 in the UK (BL, C, NLS ), 4 in the US and 1 in NZ) £1,000 This is something like the 14th or 15th edition of one of Forde’s popular romances, which kept the chapbook printers busy throughout the seventeenth century and well into the eighteenth. The frontispiece depicts a naked captive, his hands tied in front of him by a rope held by a mounted knight. This woodblock must have been in service for a considerable time, as it had evidently been attacked by woodworm before this impression was taken. The general condition of the book is lamentable, but inevitable. Rare.

53.

(Foulis Press.) The Poetical Works of George Lord Lyttelton. [And:] ... James Hammond. [And:] ... Thomas Gray. [And:] ... William Collins. Glasgow: Printed by Andrew Foulis, Printer to the University. 1787, SUBSCRIBER’S COPY, four works bound together, each with half-title and title-page, list of subscribers at end of fourth work, some light spotting and show-through of ink, a few pages uniformly browned, pp. xv, [i], iv, 130, [iv], viii, iii, [iii], 45, [3], [vi], xxiii, [i], 2, [ii], 116, 20, [iv], vii, [v], 75, [1], 4, [4], folio, contemporary red long-grain morocco, boards bordered and panelled with a gilt fillet, spine divided by a double gilt solid fillet within a gilt broken fillet, second and fourth compartments gilt-lettered direct, top compartment with small gilt stamp of ‘P’ surmounted by a ducal coronet, all edges gilt, bookplate with the crest of the Bentinck family, somewhat rubbed around the edges, spine slightly darkened, hinges sometime reinforced with red morocco, good ( ESTC T80014, T80015, T114639, T114636; Gaskell 686, 685, 684, 683) £800 Andrew Foulis the younger, who took over the Foulis Press in 1776, printed four folio ‘Poetical Works’ in 1787 – Collins, Gray, Hammond, and Lyttelton. They seem to have been issued separately but purchased most often in pairs, with composite volumes of two of the poets being more common than one on its own. This particular volume is notable for having all four of the 1787 folio poets together, and beyond that, for being an attractively-bound subscriber’s copy – the gilt monogram on the spine is of the Duke of Portland, and the bookplate of the Bentinck family, identifying the owner as William Henry Cavendish-Bentinck (1738-1809), 3rd Duke of Portland, Prime Minister and Chancellor of Oxford, among other honours, whose name appears in the subscribers’ list at the end of the Collins.

54.

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Gaskell (Elizabeth Cleghorn) Wives and Daughters. An every-day story. With eighteen illustrations by George Du Maurier. In Two Volumes. Vol. I [-II]. Smith, Elder and Co., 1866 FIRST EDITION , 2 vols. bound in 1, with 18 plates, 1 plate and text opposite foxed, pp. [iv], 336; [iv], 332, 8vo, contemporary half green calf, spine

LITERATURE

gilt in compartments, red lettering piece, marbled edges, slightly worn, an Austen family association copy inscribed by Mary Augusta Austen Leigh to her sister Emma Cassandra on May 24th 1869, good (Sadleir 936; Wolff 2428) £1,200 Gaskell’s last novel, not quite finished at her death and published posthumously, instalments having appeared in the Cornhill, with Concluding Remarks by the editor of that journal. ‘By mid1863 Gaskell was planning her next novel, Wives and Daughters. Here she turned triumphantly to the time of her own youth, the late 1820s. This brilliant and touching novel combines a comedy of manners with the parallel tales of adolescent growth to self-knowledge of Molly Gibson and Cynthia Kirkpatrick. Through humour and the suggestive imagery of science, medicine, and exploration, Gaskell excavated the personal, social, and political values that formed her own generation: in a way the novel forms a study of the evolution of a society, and some aspects of the hero Roger Hamley were drawn directly from Gaskell’s relation Charles Darwin’ (Jenny Uglow in ODNB ).

Mary Augusta Austen-Leigh (1838-1922) was the author of a biography of her great aunt, Personal Aspects of Jane Austen. She was the daughter of James Edward Austen-Leigh who wrote A Memoir of Jane Austen in 1870. Inheriting her family views, she firmly believed in protecting Jane Austen’s reputation. Her slim biography had an interesting beginning as an article in the Quarterly Review of 1919 which became chapter five in the book published the next year. It firmly defends Jane Austen’s earnest adherents who were recently under attack by critics also bashing Austen with the same tired complaints; her ‘narrow experience, reclusiveness, her life lacking in incident and consolations of culture.’

The pettiness of this argument and Miss Austen’s hyperbole (she dedicated the book ‘To All True Lovers of Jane Austen and Her Works’) sparked two witty and now famous reviews by two authors that Jane Austen would have been happy to have tea with, Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield.

55.

Genlis (Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest de St-Aubin, comtesse de) The Beauties of Genlis; being a select collection, of the most beautiful tales and other striking extracts, from Adela and Theodore; The tales of the castle; ... written by the Countess of Genlis. With copperplates. [Perth]: Printed for the Booksellers [by (sic, for) R. Morison & Son,] 1787, with a portrait frontispiece and on engraved plate, a bit browned, top outer corner of last leaf torn away with loss of page numeral, pp. [ii], [387], 8vo, modern calf, gilt, ownership inscription at head of title, name erased, leaving Fort St. George [by Inverness] and the date 1789, sound ( ESTC N15715, BL, G, NLS ; Northwestern, UCLA , U Penn, W. Ontario) £1,200 First edition of this scarce translation [?by James Morison]. Both plates are engraved by D. Lizars, Edin., and the frontispiece bears the imprint of R. Morison & Son. It seems likely therefore that the book was printed in Perth.

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56.

Goldsmith (Oliver) The Miscellaneous Works of Dr. Goldsmith. Containing all his Essays and Poems. W. Osborne and T. Griffin. 1780, half-title, signature of J. Griffiths, 1786 at the head of the text, pp. [ii], vi, 225, [1], 12mo, contemporary sheep, backstrip with five gilt-ruled raised bands, red morocco label with gilt lettering, inkstain to the lower cover, upper joint just cracking but still strong, lower joint and one corner repaired, bookplate of J. Griffiths, traces of another bookplate, good ( ESTC T146781) £300 This collected edition had been first published in 1775, and then again in 1778.

57.

Goldsmith (Oliver) The Poems of Oliver Goldsmith.

Edited by Robert Aris Willmott. With illustrations by Birket Foster and H.N. Humphreys. George Routledge and Co., 1859, additional illustrated title-page and ornamental titles designed by Noel Humphreys and printed in black and grey, wood-engraved colour illustrations by Birket Foster amongst the poems, the text throughout printed within a gilt border, pp. xvi, 159, [1], 4to, contemporary brown morocco, boards with a decorative frame blocked in black and the title blocked in gilt, spine with five raised bands, second compartment gilt-lettered direct, the rest with tools in black, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt, slightly rubbed, very good £175 Noel Humphrey’s decorations ‘are among the most elaborate and successful of all his work of this kind’ (Maclean, Victorian Book Design, p. 112), while Birket Foster’s colour illustrations ‘achieve a delicacy that makes this book perhaps both the printer’s and artist’s masterpiece’ (p. 179).

58.

Odes and Elegy Gray (Thomas) Odes. Printed at the Strawberry-Hill Press, For R. and J. Dodsley, 1757, FIRST EDITION , with engraved vignette on title, mild damp-stain in upper margins, a few spots, pp. 21, (including half-title), [bound with:] Gray (Thomas) An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard. The Fourth Edition, corrected. Printed for R. Dodsley, 1751, title-page with a few small stains, dampstain continuing from previous work, pp. 11, 4to, twentieth-century calf, blindtooled Greek key borders on sides with ornaments in the corners, longitudinal red morocco lettering piece on spine, upper cover darkened at upper inner corner, a few minor scratches on sides, spine slightly worn, good (First work: Northup 180; Hazen 1; Rothschild 1067 et seq.; Hayward 174. second: Northup 495; this edition not in Rothschild; Hayward 173 for the first edition) £1,000 First edition of the Odes, which is also the first book printed at the Strawberry Hill Press.

Walpole had unwittingly allowed a copy of the manuscript of the Elegy to fall into piratical hands, which necessitated the rapid printing of the first edition. This was followed by four more in the same year, and innumerable editions since in every shape and form.

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LITERATURE

59.

And if Critics will pardon the pun, Their Funeral will make, if you transpose the Word, What is needed, when cheerless – Real Fun. Greenwood (Thomas Longdon) The Death of Life in London, or, Tom and Jerry’s Funeral. An entirely new satirical, burlesque, operatic parody, in one act, Not taken from any thing, but taking off many things, full of wit, pregnant with sensibility, abounding in effects, pathetic, moral, instructive, and delightful, being the last that ever will be heard of those two popular heroes. Performed, for the first time, at the Royal Coburg Theatre, on Monday, June 2, 1823. Printed for John Lowndes. [1823], FIRST ( ONLY ) EDITION , with a folding coloured frontispiece by George Cruikshank, very slightly spotted, short closed tear at foot of title and an ink spot at the very edge, plate creased at fore-edge, not affecting engraved surface, pp. 20, 8vo, later half blue morocco by R. Wallis, very good (Cohn 368; BL only in COPAC , but adequately represented in Worldcat) £1,900 Pierce Egan’s Life in London, or, The day and night scenes of Jerry Hawthorn, esq., and his elegant friend, Corinthian Tom, accompanied by Bob Logic, the Oxonian, in their rambles and sprees through the metropolis, instantly and unprecedentedly popular, came out in its twelfth and last part in September 1822. There were many imitations, piracies and stage versions, including this, very scarce, one. ‘Egan returned to the theme in 1828, rebuking the pirates and plagiarists with his Finish to the adventures of Tom, Jerry, and Logic, with numerous coloured illustrations by Robert Cruikshank’ ( ODNB ). The reports of their deaths had been exaggerated.

60.

Hardy (Thomas) The Return of the Native.

Smith, Elder & Co. 1878, FIRST EDITION , FIRST ISSUE (without the quotation marks after A Pair of Blue Eyes on the title of vol. I), with sketch map (drawn by Hardy himself and separately printed by Stanfords) frontispiece in vol. i, complete with half titles, initial blanks and advertisement leaf in vol. ii, a little foxing, mostly to the first and last few leaves and on the edges, 3 vols., pp. [ii, blank], vi, 304; [ii, blank], vi, 297, [2]; [ii, blank], vi, 320, 8vo, original brown diagonal-fine-ribbed cloth, blocked in black on front with panel design, in blind on back with 2-rule border, lettered on spine in gold and blind with bands and ornaments blocked in black and gold (Purdt’s primary binding), hinges just starting, slightly worn

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at extremities, a spot of damage to vol. iii spine, backstrips very slightly dulled, very good (Purdy pp 24-27; Sadleir 1113; Wolff 2989) £7,500 The first edition consisted of 1,000 copies, most of which went to the circulating libraries: hence, copies in the original cloth which do not bear evidence of that fate, like this one, are very scarce.

61.

Hardy (Thomas) Wessex Poems and other Verses. Harper. 1898, FIRST EDITION , frontispiece and 12 other full-page illustrations and 18 head- and tail-pieces by the author, frontispiece tissue-guard present, shaken, pp. xii, 228, cr.8vo., original dark green fine-ribbed cloth, backstrip lettering and Hardy emblem on the front cover all gilt blocked, backstrip rubbed at extreme tail, endpapers lightly browned, recent owner’s signature on front free endpaper, t.e.g., others untrimmed, good (Purdy p.96) £300 Hardy’s first collection of verse, including much material which pre-dates the earliest of his novels.

62.

[Helme (Elizabeth)] Saint-Clair des Isles, ou les Exilés à l’Isle de Barra; Tradition écossaise, traduit librement de l’anglais. Par Mme de Montolieu, auteur de Caroline de Lichfield.

Tome premier [-quatrième]. Paris: H. Nicolle, 1809, 4 vols., half-titles (one with piece torn from outer margin), vol. i slightly browned and foxed, the others less so, pp. [iv], 324; [iv], 324; [iv], 327; [iv], 312, 12mo, contemporary red skiver, roll-tooled vine borders on sides, flat spines gilt in compartments, spines and corners slightly darkened where covering an underlying material, good (see Summers, £450 Gothic, pp. 491-92) The translation of The Outlaws of Barra , set in the Reign of James I of Scotland, is probably testament to the continuing vogue of Ossian in France as much as the taste for the Gothic. It was reprinted (in English) several times during the nineteenth century.

This edition not in COPAC , which lists an 1808 edition where the text is said to be a ‘roman’ rather than a ‘Tradition écossaise.’ The English original had appeared in 1803.

WorldCat locates 2 copies in America, Chapel Hill and Allegheny College.

63.

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[Hibbert (George, editor and translator)] Tales of the Cordelier [?by Michele Colombo] Metamorphosed, as narrated in a manuscript from the Borromeo Collection; and in the Cordelier Cheval of M. Piron. With translations. Printed at the Shakespeare Press by W. Bulmer and W. Nicol. 1821, FIRST EDITION , with an etched title vignette and 10 etched illustrations by Robert Cruikshank, these all on India paper and mounted in the text, scattered foxing, pp. [iv], 54, [1], 4to,

LITERATURE

contemporary polished citron calf, double gilt fillets on sides enclosing a panel of triple gilt fillets with gilt ornaments at the corners, spine gilt, gilt edges and attractive gilt tooling on the (narrow) edges, slightly worn, split at top of lower joint bookseller’s ticket of Robson Kerslake, and inside the front cover the book-plate of Albert M. Cohn, good £850 According to a pencil note on the fly-leaf only 62 copies were printed: at any rate the book was made ‘for the amusement of a few friends who are not unwilling to laugh.’ Hibbert ‘was a book-collector of the most liberal and excellent kind. With taste, means, and opportunities, he devoted over thirty years of his life to the formation of a fine library, as will easily appear from the following [8-page] list of his most precious volumes’ (Quaritch, Dictionary of Book-Collectors ). Count Borromeo’s collection is, according to Archer Taylor, the ‘foundation of the bibliography of the Italian novellieri’ ( Book Catalogues, p. 138). It was Borromeo’s interest in the Italian novellieri which revived the taste for this literary genre amongst his contemporaries and caused many of the novels to be newly printed and imitated. After the death of Borromeo in 1813, Payne and Foss acquired the collection, which was sold at auction in London in 1817.

Appropriately enough, this copy formerly belonged to Albert Cohn, the bibliographer of George Cruikshank.

64.

Hope (John) Thoughts in Prose and Verse, Started, in his Walks. Stockton: by R. Christopher and sold by W. Goldsmith [etc]. 1780, FIRST EDITION , half-title discarded, pp. xvi, 349, [1], 8vo, contemporary tree calf, skilfully rebacked with gilt in six compartments and repeated lyre tool, preserving original lettering piece, Greek key-pattern borders on sides, minor rubbing, marbled endpapers, good ( ESTC T71743) £400 A lively provincial miscellany by a London man of business. Hope served a brief term in Parliament, but lost his seat, probably for having sided with John Wilkes in the question of the Middlesex election. The poems are for the most part occasional. Included is one on the death of Laurence Sterne, whose influence is often clearly evident in the essays, particularly two on ‘the nature and mutability of stilts’, which deal in part with Samuel Johnson and his Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland (1775). There are also essays on painting, architecture, music and dancing. Hope had an interest in military affairs, and his book is dedicated to the officers of the Northamptonshire militia; the text includes a fair number of passages relating to the American Revolution. ESTC lists this book in only four UK locations: BL, Liverpool, National Library of Scotland, and Oxford.

65.

Housman’s Handbook for Shropshire and its influence on A Shropshire Lad (Housman (Alfred Edward)) MURR AY (John, publisher) Handbook for Shropshire and Cheshire. With Map. New Edition. John Murray, 1879, A.E. HOUSMAN’S COPY, WITH NOTES BY HIM (see below), with a folding map in a pocket at the end, the outer two panels when folded slightly browned, pp. L, 174, 64 (ads), 8vo, original red cloth, lettered in gilt on the upper cover and spine, book-label inside front cover ‘From the Library of A.E. Housman’, later from the collection of Robert Wells, very good £3,500

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An outstanding association copy. ‘Though he came to be popularly associated with the neighbouring county of Shropshire, Housman insisted that he did not know Shropshire well and freely admitted that his poems contained topographical errors: the fact that in his early years “its hills were our western horizon” (letter to Maurice Pollet, 5 Feb 1933, Letters) qualified it as a territory that dreams are made of’ (Norman Page in ODNB ). The significance of this guide book and its relation to A Shropshire Lad is outlined in a letter by Robert Wells published in the TLS September 9, 1998; this letter was prompted by a letter from Christopher Cox, taking issue with Wells on one point in the latter’s review of Christopher Rick’s edition of Housman’s Collected Poems (TLS , July 15-21, 1998, pp. 773-74).’ Housman draws on the Handbook at several ... points ... the Handbook contains a few other notes and marked passages which throw light on his preoccupations.’

Housman’s notes are short, but forceful; neatly written in pencil in 9 places. On the flyleaf there is a list of 4 Shropshire mountains with their height in feet. A note on p. viii is a cross reference to a passage later on. On p. 15 the passage concerning ‘Dead Man’s Fair’ is noted, and on a slip of paper, attached by a rusty paperclip, is a list of all the Stretton Fairs.On pp. 34-35 there is underlining in a passage concerning Wenlock Edge and a 1733 earthquake.. On p. 40 there is a marginal mark, and on p. 59, where the spire of St. Mary’s, Shrewsbury is ‘said’ to be the third highest in the kingdom, attracts the note ‘by liars.’ On the previous page, where the ashes of Uricorn are said to smoulder underneath its slopes, the word smoulder is queried. This in fact is the starting point of Robert Wells’s letter, showing how the Handbook found its way into A Shropshire Lad. And there are other echoes.

Lastly, away from the poetry, but plainly commemorating a visit to Shropshire, in the list of recommended hotels at the beginning, The Wrekin in Wellington attracts a terse ‘bad’ in the margin.

66.

Howard (Robert) Four new Plays, viz: The Surprisal, The Committee, Comedies.

The Indian-Queen, The Vestal-Virgin, Tragedies. As they were acted by His Majesties Servants at the Theatre-Royal. For Henry Herringham. 1665, each play with a printed title, small piece chipped from the upper blank margin of the title, A1 with a repair, again to the blank margin, rust-hole to T4 touching one or two letters of text, scattered foxing and browning, pp. [xii], 242, [1], folio, contemporary panelled sheep, rebacked, gilt lettering to the flat backstrip, the sides with surface abrasions and some restoration, sound (Wing H2995; ESTC R21413; Stratman 2436; Macdonald 68a) £900 Robert Howard (1626-1698), playwright and politician, was of privileged stock; his father an Earl, and his mother the daughter of William Cecil. Little is known of his early life, but that he was at Magdalen College, Oxford around 1641 and was knighted for gallantry in action at the battle of Cropredy Bridge, on 29 June 1644; he later became wealthy and

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LITERATURE

active in the government. ‘In the first decade of the Restoration, Howard combined his political career with that of a successful dramatist and critic... Howard, Thomas Killigrew, and a group of eight actors became shareholders in the Theatre Royal, Bridges Street.

In addition to being the scene designer for this theatre in 1663, Howard became the literary collaborator, and subsequent opponent, of John Dryden, who married Howard’s sister Elizabeth in December 1663. The Committee, a political comedy first performed in November 1662, proved the most enduringly popular of Howard’s plays; The Indian Queen, a rhymed heroic play co-authored with Dryden and first performed in January 1664, provided one of the topics in the literary quarrel between the two men, the effect of rhyme in drama. Dryden introduced Howard in his Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668), assigning to Crites Howard’s arguments against rhyme as developed in the preface to Four New Plays’ ( ODNB ). The Indian Queen was not included in the editions of Dryden’s works until 1717.

67.

Hughes (John) The Siege of Damascus. A Tragedy...

The second edition. Printed and Sold by Tho. Astley, 1728, engraved frontispiece, somewhat browned, pp. [xiv], 67, [3], [bound with:] Addison (Joseph) Cato. A tragedy... The twelfth edition. J. Tonson. 1728, engraved frontispiece, lightly browned and spotted, pp. 83, [1], [and:] Cibber (Colley) The Careless Husband. A comedy...

The sixth edition. J. Tonson, 1725, engraved frontispiece, lightly browned, pp. 94, [2], 12mo, contemporary black morocco, spine divided by double gilt fillets, red morocco lettering piece in second compartment, the rest with central floral tools and corner leafy sprays all gilt, marbled endpapers, front joint a little rubbed, armorial bookplate of Ripon, good (First work not in ESTC ; N29952; T26006) £275 The first work in this attractively bound collection is a very scarce reissue of the second edition of John Hughes’s popular tragedy The Siege of Damascus ; the first edition was in 1720 and the second followed in 1721. ESTC records the first reprint in 1727 and several more over the next few decades, but this 1728 reissue with a cancel title-page is not included. COPAC locates one copy (Oxford), as does Worldcat (Virginia).

68.

Inchbald ([Elizabeth]) A Simple Story. In four volumes. The second edition. Printed for G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1791, half-titles discarded, ownership inscription of Jane Panton on title-pages, a touch of light soiling and browning, one leaf in vol. i with a small paper flaw to blank margin, one gathering in vol. iii rough at bottom edge (missed by the binder’s knife), pp. [ii], vii, [1], 232; [ii], 255, [1]; [ii], 212; [ii], 157, [1], 8vo, late nineteenth-century half calf, sometime rebacked to style, dark brown morocco lettering pieces, marbled boards, edges, and endpapers, slightly rubbed, corners a bit worn, hinges neatly relined, good ( ESTC T128226; Raven & Forster 1791:41 [1st edn.]) £750

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The second edition, from the same year as the first. Mrs Inchbald (1753-1821) was a moderately successful actor turned highly successful playwright; this was her first of two novels and it incorporates some theatrical conventions. Maria Edgeworth praised it highly, writing to Inchbald that she ‘never read any novel that affected [her] so strongly’.

The ODNB describes it thus: ‘A Simple Story explores in much greater psychological depth issues and behavioural patterns that also preoccupied her in her plays ... its overall effect is to disturb eighteenth-century complacency about the benevolence of paternal power in a way Inchbald’s drama did not’.

ESTC lists this edition in only four UK libraries (BL, Trinity College Dublin, University of

Essex, and the Wisbech and Fenland Museum) though there is also a copy in the Bodleian; there are also two holdings in Europe and seven in North America listed. The previous owner Jane Panton was possibly the writer (1847-1923), who published ten novels between 1882 and 1916.

69.

70.

Ingoldsby (Thomas) The Ingoldsby Legends. In Two Volumes. Edited with notes ... by R. H. Dalton Barham. Macmillan. [1901,] numerous plates after Cruikshank, Leech, and Tenniel, ownership inscription on the front endpaper, frontispiece of vol.ii a little foxed, pp. xix, 427; xi, 467, large 8vo, contemporary dark red half morocco, the spines panelled and ruled in gilt enclosing gilt emblems, t.e.g., by Morrell with their stamp on the endpapers of vol.ii, upper joint tender, one or two marks to the covers of vol.ii, good £150 an uncut copy in boards [Johnson (Samuel)] A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. Printed for W. Strahan; and T. Cadell. 1775, second edition, first issue (six-line errata), wax spot on I2, small piece torn out of top margin of last leaf and fly-leaf, pp. [iv], 384, 8vo, uncut in the original boards, skilfully rebacked and showing creases from opening, a little soiled and worn, preserved in a cloth chemise and slip-in case, good (Fleeman 75.1J/2a; ESTC T83702) £750 In the second edition three signatures are identical with those of the the first and another was reimpressed from standing type: the rest of the volume was reset and reprinted. This edition used to be called the second issue of the first edition.

71.

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Johnson (Samuel) The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia. A Tale. Two Volumes in One. Embellished with Superb Engravings. Printed for C. Cooke, [?1799,] with engraved general title (‘forming part of Cooke’s ‘Pocket Edition of Select Novels’) with vignette, woodcut device on title and woodcut tailpiece, and two engraved plates, pp. 108, 12mo, [bound with:] Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet de) The History of Candid; or, All for the Best.

Cooke’s edition. Printed for C. Cooke, [?1800,] engraved general title (‘Part of Cooke’s edition’), and 2 engraved plates (one of them bound in Rasselas) , pp. 179, [1], 12mo, original tree calf, slight wear to extremities, gilt ruled compartments on spine, red lettering piece, good (First work: Fleeman 59.4R/33) £175

LITERATURE

A happy pairing. Rasselas is Fleeman’s third Cooke edition, with the first-Cooke-edition engraved title-page (such mixtures are not uncommon with Cooke’s printings), but ESTC has no listing that matches it in imprint and pagination – the closest is T116312, with ‘by J. Adlard’ on the printed title where this has ‘17, Paternoster Row’ (BL and Glasgow only in the UK). Candide is a similarly unrecorded combination, closest to ESTC T483286 in pagination but with a different imprint, plates dated 1800-1798-1799 instead of 17971798-1810, and no advertisements on the final page.

72.

Klopstock (Friedrich Gottlieb) The Messiah. Attempted from the German of Mr. Klopstock. To which is prefixed his Introduction on Divine Poetry. [Translated by Mary and Joseph Collyer. Two volumes bound as one.] Printed for R. and J. Dodsley. 1763, FIRST ENGLISH EDITION , first and last few leaves foxed, just a little spotting otherwise, pp. xlviii, 232, [8], 299, 12mo, contemporary French mottled sheep, backstrip divided by gilt rules, red morocco label in second compartment, the rest with central gilt urn tools surrounded by dots and leaf-spears, gilt chain roll along joints, marbled endpapers, lightly rubbed, front joint just cracking at head, tiny gouge at base of front board, one small shallow wormhole at lower joint, good ( ESTC T92280) £250 The first appearance in English of the masterwork of Klopstock, the most celebrated German poet of the late 18th century (and a favourite of Goethe). Klopstock published the first books of his religious epic Der Messias in the 1740s. This prose translation in ten books was begun by Mary Collyer, and completed after her death in 1762 by her husband Joseph. It was immediately popular, and ESTC records further editions of 1764, 1766, 1769, and 1771. In 1773 Klopstock rather suddenly published a final section of the poem (he had written little else but elegies since the death of his wife fifteen years earlier), which was never translated into English by the Collyers.

73.

[La Calprenède (Gaultier de Coste, seigneur de)] Hymen’s Præludia: or Love’s MasterPiece. Being that So-much-Admired Romance, intituled, Cleopatra. In Twelve Parts. Written originally in the French, and now rendred into English, by Robert Loveday [and John Coles, James Webb and John Davies]. Printed for Ralph Smith, 1698, title within double rules, occasional paper-flaws, rust or other small holes with the loss of the odd letter, minor ink, wax or other stains, a few leaves foxed, slightly browned in places, lacking final advertisement leaf, pp. [viii], 958, folio in 4s, near contemporary mottled calf, rebacked, corners worn, inscription on fly-leaf recording the purchase of it on 3 Oct. 1699 for 18/6, a few emendations to the text in the same early hand, nineteenthcentury book-plate of the Marquess of Headfort, good (Wing, 2nd ed., L124a; ESTC R221100, giving the date as 1652 in error) £2,000

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The text has a convoluted publishing history. ‘Having become proficient in French and Italian under the instruction of another member of the Clinton household, Loveday translated into English the first three parts of La Calprenède’s Cléopâtre under the title Hymen’s Præludia, or, Love’s Master-Piece ; these appeared respectively in 1652, 1654, and 1655, and were reprinted many times. Despite the erroneous attribution of other parts of the romance to Loveday’s hand in some later editions, it was only with the collaboration of John Coles that part 4 was completed and published in 1656. Loveday [who died in 1656] was an agreeable writer, and his translation is accurate and idiomatic’ ( ODNB ). Coles was responsible for parts 5-7, James Webb for part 8, and John Davies for parts 9-12. Individual parts, and incomplete collections were published until the first collected edition appeared in 1668, and there were several editions until the mideighteenth century. The daughter of Anthony and Cleopatra, the Cleopatra of the title (also known as Cleopatra Selene) was the consort of Juba II, King of Mauretania. The present edition is a rare one, with just BL, London Library, Bodley, Newberry and Barr Smith Library recorded in ESTC .

74.

[Lauder (Sir Thomas Dick)] Lochandhu, histoire du XVIIIe siècle, par Sir Edward Maccaulay ... traduite de l’anglais sur la seconde édition, par A.-J.-B. Defauconpret.

[Four volumes.] Paris: Charles Gosselin ... and Mame et Delaunay-Vallée 1828, some foxing at the beginning of vol. i, and in vols. iii and iv, pp. xix, 239; [iv], 256; [iv], 250; [iv], 249, 12mo, contemporary ?Austrian half calf, 4 raised bands on spines with blue skiver lettering pieces in the second and fourth compartments, the remainder gilt, blue and pink strip of paper pasted on towards the foot, spines a trifle faded, Brunsee library label inside front cover, very good ( NLS and BL only in COPAC , Worldcat adds only BNF and Munich) £300 First edition in French, and a charming set, and also rare. This book comes from the library of Marie Caroline, Duchesse de Berry (1798-1870). In exile from 1833, she divided her time between Venice and Schloss Brunsee, near Graz in Austria.

‘Dick Lauder’s romantic view of the Moray area was set out in two historical novels, Lochindhu [sic] (1825) and The Wolf [sic] of Badenoch (1827), very popular (especially the latter) throughout the nineteenth century; they gave a lively sense of the region’s geography, but showed also how much abler a historical novelist was Sir Walter Scott’ ( ODNB ). One of the entries in Worldcat gives the date as 1825, but this is an error: Lochandhu first appeared in English in 1825, but this is translated from the second edition of 1827. The publishers take a swipe at the Minerva Press in a footnote to the introductory Note, taken from MacCulloch, who says that he was inspired at Loch-an-Eilan, that it seemed to him that he could write a chapter which would would be worthy of the Minerva Press. The footnote tells us what the Minerva Press is, and that every year it issues a mass of novels, each one worse than the other.

75.

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Uncut in boards [Le Sage (Alain René)] The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane. A new Translation.

By the Author of Roderick Random [Tobias Smollett]. Adorned with Cuts, neatly engraved. In four volumes. The sixth edition. Printed for W. Strahan [and 9 others], 1785, 20 engraved plates, uncut, a hint of browning, pp. xii, 312; iv, 263;vii, 292; [viii], 276, 12mo, original boards, rebacked with drab paper and with printed paper labels, a few joints partly split, good ( ESTC T130652) £175

LITERATURE

The rebacking appears to have been an early, if not contemporary, ‘reinforcement’, rather than an actual repair, and the printed paper labels seem to be original. The second and fourth vols. are undated. Smollett’s translation first appeared in 1749.

76.

Arthurian Tales [Legrand D’Aussy (Pierre Jean Baptiste)] Tales of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. [Two volumes.]

Printed for Egerton, Hookham, Kearsley, Robinson, Bew and Sewel, 1786, FIRST EDITION in English, minor staining here and there, small hole in last leaf of vol. ii with the loss of a letter on either side, pp. [iv], xxxii, 239; [2-] 8 (apparently lacking half-title, 6-8 being advertisements), 240, 12mo, contemporary half calf, red and green lettering pieces, remaining compartments gilt, last 2 Tales with manuscript notes by a contemporary reader, the latter identifying The Physician of Brai as the source of Fielding’s The Mock Doctor, this inscription slightly cropped, very good ( ESTC T160021, locating BL and NLW in the UK, Columbia and Rice in the US; Worldcat adds Yale, Claremont College, Ohio, and Keio in Japan; Raven & Forster 1786:31). £2,500 A rare book, this is a translation of Fabliaux ou contes du XIIe et du XIIIe siecle (Paris 1779) compiled and edited by Pierre Jean Baptiste Legrand D’Aussy. The translator in his Preface praises Le Grand for having ‘removed the rubbish of seven centuries, and discovered the boundaries of literary property.’ He then goes on to give ‘the substance of our author’s [lengthy] prefatory dissertation’ – omitted in subsequent editions. See Geoffrey J. Wilson, A medievalist in the eighteenth century: le Grand d’Aussy and the Fabliaux , Nijhoff, 1975.

77.

Arthurian Tales again [Legrand D’Aussy (Pierre Jean Baptiste)] Norman Tales. From the French.

[Translated by John Williamson]. Printed for T. and J. Egerton, Military Library, 1789, a little damp-staining at either end, pp. x (including half-title), 278, 12mo, half calf, rebacked, corners worn, good ( ESTC T147716, locating BL, NLW and Bodley in the UK, Harvard, Lilly and Chicago in the US). £1,200 A new edition of Fabliaux ou contes du XIIe et du XIIIe siecle in English, only slightly less rare than the 1786 first under a longer title. Another edition with yet another title, Tales of the Minstrels, appeared in 1800, and many years later as Carew Hazlitt’s Feudal Period , 1873. Egerton’s Military Library did publish military books, but not exclusively: perhaps his chief claim to fame is the publication of Sense and Sensibility in 1811.

78.

Lever (Charles) Davenport Dunn: A Man of Our Day ... With Illustrations by “Phiz”.

Chapman and Hall. 1859, FIRST EDITION , bound from the parts, etched frontispiece, additional title-page, and 42 plates by Phiz, occasional foxing, pp. vii, 695, 8vo,

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contemporary dark blue calf, spine gilt panelled and with gilt decorated low raised bands, gilt lettered red leather label in second compartment, marbled sides, edges and endpapers, the sides slightly rubbed, good (Sadleir 1401; Wolff 4084) £100 Wolff quotes Sadleir as referring to this work as ‘the rarest of the 8vo novels first published in parts’, a statement with which he ‘would emphatically agree.’

79.

[Lund (John)] The Newcastle Rider, or, Ducks and Pease: to which is added The Cobler and Parson, The Kentish Parson, The Pawn-broker in the Coal-pit and Jack Smart. York: Printed by J. Kendrew, [c. 1800,] with 2 woodcut tail-pieces and one illustration in the text, a bit browned, outer pages soiled and rubbed, pp. 24, 12mo, self wrappers, overstitched, sound £450 ‘John Lund (fl. 1785), humorous poet, of Pontefract, is said to have been a barber in that town. Little else is known of his life, although a contemporary declared that his satires ‘would not disgrace the pen of a Churchill’ (Boothroyd, 495). In 1771 Lund published The mirrour: a poem, in imitation of C. Churchill, to which are added three tales, in the manner of Prior. In 1777 he published A collection of original tales in verse, in the manner of Prior; to which is added a second edition of ‘Ducks and Pease, or, The Newcastle Rider’. The story is rudimentary, being that of a rider (that is, bagman) who, when airing himself as a person of quality, is suddenly confronted by his master; but it proved extremely popular, passing through numerous editions down to 1838 and was reprinted in Richardson’s Table Book ’ ( ODNB ). Most of these editions were published in the north of England – Newcastle, Anwick, Penrith, &c. This edition is rare: COPAC records a single copy, at Aberdeen; WorldCat adds no other, and it is not listed in ESTC .

The original stitching (?if any) has been replaced.

80.

MacNicol (Donald) Remarks on Dr. Samuel Johnson’s Journey to the Hebrides; in which are contained, observations on the antiquities, language, genius, and manners of the highlanders of Scotland. Printed for T. Cadell. 1779, FIRST EDITION , half-title discarded, one leaf with a horizontal paper flaw neatly repaired with a resulting chip from blank margin (no loss of text), a touch of faint toning, pp. [iii]-viii, 371, [1], 8vo, early twentiethcentury polished mid-brown calf, backstrip with five raised bands, brown morocco label in second compartment, the rest infilled with gilt tools, gilt logo of the Northern Light Board to front board, joints rubbed, a few scratches to lower board, good ( ESTC T95826) £600 Donald MacNicol (1735-1802) was an important collector of Scottish literature, especially Ossianic material; he took immediate offense to Samuel Johnson’s dismissal of the Ossian poems (and Scottish literature in general) after his tour to the Hebrides. This attack on Johnson’s claims and character was almost certainly expanded before printing by a more vituperative opponent – possibly James Macpherson – since MacNicol was known as a ‘humble and pleasant minister’ ( ODNB ). It saw a number of editions, including several issued with Johnson’s Journey.

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LITERATURE

The Northern Lighthouse Board, which recently deaccessioned part of its library, is responsible for protecting sea traffic along the coast of Scotland and the Isle of Man.

81.

The author’s marked-up copy, ‘a feminist play’ Malloch (George Robert) Arabella. A Play in Three Acts. Stephen Swift and Co Ltd, 1912, FIRST EDITION , front free endpaper excised, pp. [127, including initial blank, last page not numbered], [8, advertisements], 8vo, original cloth, titled in gilt on the upper cover within a gilt frame, gilt lettering on spine, uncut, spine faded and with a fracture at the middle, sides partly faded, the author’s copy, with cuts and a rewritten ending (see below), sound £325 A not very beautiful, but a very interesting copy of a play that was hailed by ‘Votes for Women’ on September 27, 1912, as a ‘feminist play’, and ‘a dramatic treat.’ And so it is: the leading character is a forthright and forceful spokewoman in the cause. The author has gone through the text making cuts with a broad soft pencil, which leaves the text below legible. The final scene is cut, and the heroine’s last action is changed. “Cuts” must be left to the producer, however, according to a pencil note on the first page, on the verso of which is the author’s Jessie King-like book-plate. Inside the front cover is a press cutting, supplied by an agency, from the Manchester Guardian, calling it a ‘moving piece,’ and expressing the hope that Miss Octavia Kenmore, who played Arabella on the London stage (Royal Court), would repeat the performance in Manchester. Octavia Kenmore was well-known for her roles in Ibsen.

This is the first published work of Scottish-born Malloch, 1875-1953. Several volumes of poetry and more dramas appeared over the years to 1930.

82.

Milton (John) Paradise Lost. A Poem in Twelve Books.

The Third Edition. Revised and Augmented by the ...

Author. Printed by S. Simmons, 1678, with the Dolle engraved portrait frontispiece, complete with final 2 blanks, uniformly a bit browned or spotted, 4 leaves with small portions missing from lower margins (oddly, each of them the 7th leaf in gatherings B-E), pp. [viii], 331, [5, blank], 8vo, [bound with:] Milton (John) Paradise Regain’d. A Poem. In IV Books.

To which is added Samson Agonistes. Printed for John Starkey, 1680, slight browning and spotting, pp. 132 (including ‘preliminary’ leaves), [4, advertisements], 8vo, contemporary panelled calf, rebacked (a little crudely), spine gilt, red lettering piece, Marvell’s name

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written out in full at the end of his ‘On Paradise Lost’, contemporary initials ‘P a r’ at beginning of first text and on recto of Licence leaf to the second, inscription on fly-leaf of H. Wigley [the] Tything [near Worcester], April 26th 1791, sound ( ESTC R19396 & R300; Coleridge 92 & 169; Pforzheimer 719) £2,000 This edition of Paradise Lost was the third and last to be published by Samuel Simmons and is derived completely from the second edition of 1674, itself the standard text, the last supervised by Milton [d. 1674], incorporating his final alterations, required by the division into 12 books. The portrait is not found in all copies, but is not called for. It was probably offered as an ‘extra’ by some booksellers.

83.

Milton (John) The Poetical Works of John Milton. From the text of Dr. Newton.

With the life of the author, and a critique on Paradise Lost, by Joseph Addison, Esq. Cooke’s Edition. [In two volumes.] Printed for C. Cooke, [1796,] engraved frontispiece and additional title-page in each volume, plus 7 engraved plates (all lightly foxed), most with tissue-guards, pp. 72, 278; 296, 12mo, contemporary quarter sprinkled calf with marbled boards, corners tipped in vellum, spines divided by a gilt fillet, red morocco lettering pieces, ownership inscription of W.E. Goodchild to initial blank, slightly rubbed, a touch of wear to a few corners, good (Coleridge 224; ESTC T135472; Alston III 120) £150 A pleasant copy of this pocket edition. Coleridge notes that the plates ‘are usually handcoloured’ but not in this instance.

84.

Milton (John) The Poetical Works ... In six volumes. With the principal notes of various commentators. To which are added illustrations, with some account of the life of Milton. By the Rev. Henry John Todd. Printed for J. Johnson, [and 25 other firms, partnerships and individuals] by Bye and Law 1801, first Todd edition, portrait frontispiece in vol. i and one facsimile plate in vol. vi, pp. [xxiv], ccxv, [1], 303, [1]; [iv], 504; [iv], 494; xix, [1], 511, [1]; [iv], 511, [1]; [iv], 458, Royal 8vo, contemporary Russia, single gilt fillet border on sides, gilt rules on either side of raised bands on spines, lettered in gilt direct, gilt edges, spines a little dry and slightly worn at head, book-plate of Shute Barrington, Lord Bishop of Durham, very good £900 Todd’s ‘chef d’oeuvre ... In addition to Todd’s own copious annotations and judicious selection from previous commentaries, the work included for the first time extracts from Stillingfleet’s projected edition, together with criticism solicited from the family of Thomas and Joseph Warton. Republished on four subsequent occasions, it remained the standard edition for fifty years. The first volume, a thorough biographical study of Milton, revised in 1809 and 1826, was published separately and enjoyed an equal measure of success’ ( ODNB ). A handsome set.

Shute Barrington (1734-1826) was perhaps not entirely a lover of Milton: ‘Accused of breaking faith with his forebears [who had been prominent parliamentarians in the civil war], on 30 January 1772 Barrington aggravated matters by preaching the Westminster Abbey Lords sermon, commemorating the martyrdom of Charles I, in which he again uncompromisingly repudiated any need for constitutional reform’ ( ODNB ).

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LITERATURE

85.

Mouhy (Charles de Fieux, chevalier de) The Busy-Body: or, Successful Spy: being the entertaining history of Mons. Bigand, A Man infinitely Inquisitive and Enterprising even to Rashness; which unhappy Faculties, nevertheless, instead of ruining, raised him from the Lowest Obscurity, to a most Splendid Fortune.

Interspers’d with several humorous stories. The Whole Containing great Variety of Adventures, equally Instructive and Diverting. Vol. I [-II]. Printed for F. Cogan, 1742, FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH , uniformly slightly browned, preliminary leaves a little frayed, pp. xii (but lacking half title), 300; xii, 293, [3], [4, ads], 12mo, modern calf, double gilt fillet borders on sides with corner ornaments, spines gilt in compartments with twin red lettering pieces, sound ( ESTC T96254) £650 The scarce first edition in English of La Mouche ; a Dublin edition appeared 26 years later.

This is one of de Mouhy’s liveliest and most humourous novels and is matched in spirit by the (anonymous) translation – for example, in the Preface to the first volume the translator reckons that de Mouhy’s Paysanne Parvenue has been ‘miserably murder’d under the title of The Fortunate Country Maid.’

86.

Murray (Richard) Alethia: or a General System of Moral Truths, and Natural Religion; Contained in letters from Selima, Empress of the Turks, to her daughter Isabella, at Grand Cairo. With critical and historical Notes. [Two volumes.] Printed for T. Osborne, 1747, FIRST EDITION , a bit of light browning, small early inscription erased from title-page, pp. xiv, [iv], 162; [iv], 167, [9], 8vo, contemporary calf, borders bordered with a double gilt fillet, spines with five raised bands between double gilt fillets, lettering pieces lost, rubbed and scratched, slight loss from headcaps, sound ( ESTC T102242) £800 If ESTC is correct in identifying this Richard Murray with the author of the long-standing textbook of logic used at Trinity College Dublin (Artis logicae compendium, first published 1759), then he wrote this ambitious epistolary moral tale in his early twenties, before progressing to his D.D. and the position of Professor of Mathematics at TCD. He also translated Loredona’s Life of Adam, and for the last four years of his life served as Provost of Trinity.

This is a scarce publication: ESTC lists copies in the BL, NLS , Oxford, National Trust only within the UK, and Johns Hopkins, Kansas, and Gottingen only without. (The Dublin single-volume edition of the same year is in the BL and National Library of Ireland only).

87.

Palgrave (Francis Turner) The Golden Treasury of the best songs and lyrical poems in the English language ... Macmillan. 1861, FIRST EDITION , first issue, vignette engraving on title-page (with tissue guard), pp. [xii], 332, 8vo, original glazed green cloth by Burn (with his ticket), smooth backstrip gilt lettered direct including price of ‘4/6’, upper side with gilt blocked double line border and central roundel, lower side with blind fillet border, brown endpapers, just slightly bumped at extremities, date inscription to front flyleaf, very good £400 A very pleasant copy of the most famous and influential of anthologies.

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88.

(Pasquinade.) A Dialogue between Pasquin and Marforio [sic]. [?London: c. 1705], manuscript in ink on paper, watermarked with a crowned fleur de lys flanked by leaf sprays, sometime folded and the ‘address’ panel, with the words ‘The Pasquinel’ at the top, dust-soiled, the folds on this leaf a trifle frayed, pp. [2], with integral £750 ‘address’ leaf, folio, modern marbled boards, good Cf. Foxon D263, ?1701; the Wing entry D1320 has been cancelled, the printing being now considered post 1700. Though this Pasquinade circulated in broadside and anthology form, its manuscript form was probably just as, if not more, influential. The broadsides are excessively rare.

89.

[Peacock (Lucy)] The Adventures of the Six Princesses of Babylon, in their Travels to the Temple of Virtue: an Allegory. Printed for the Author, by T. Bensley; 1785, FIRST EDITION , LARGE PAPER COPY (23.6cm tall), SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR on the last page of text (the last two letters of the signature removed by the binder’s knife), some browning and spotting, early gift inscription to half-title, ‘& Pence’ added after the price on half-title, pp. xxxi, [1], 131, [1], 4to, modern quarter calf, marbled boards, spine divided by gilt fillets, green morocco lettering piece, part of old pastedown with gift inscription preserved, good ( ESTC N2727; Muir p. 97; Raven & Forster 1785:40) £950 The first recorded work by Lucy Peacock (fl. 1785-1816), a bookseller and children’s writer, about whom little is known apart from the evidence of her works – despite the popularity of this title, an allegory for children based on Spenser’s Faerie Queene. This is probably a subscriber’s copy: the contemporary gift inscription on the half-title presents the book to Anne Maria Tryon(?) Cooper from ‘her kind governess Mrs. Wicksteed’; two women of that name subscribed, one in Cambridge and one in London. The later gift inscription, on the endpaper, is to Anny Judith Key from her cousin Matilda, Dec. 26th, 1833.

Among other things, Six Princesses is notable for its list of over 1,250 subscribers.

Peacock signed many copies, probably holding court in Mr Perfetia’s shop at 91 Wimpole Street (an early form of ‘signing sessions’); she usually signed at the end of the text, as in this present copy, but sometimes on one of the preliminary leaves. It has been suggested that the book, because a number of girls’ schools are among the subscribers, became required reading for at least some of the daughters of gentlefolk. ESTC records five separate 1785 issues, but this large paper version, although the most common, is still only listed in four UK locations (Cambridge, Glasgow, Reading, John Rylands – plus 9 in North America).

90.

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‘vncouth phrases and speeches out of sundry of the best authors explaned’ Percyvall, or Perceval (Richard) A Dictionarie in Spanish and English, first published into the English tongue by Ric. Perciuale Gent. Now enlarged and amplified with many thousand words, as by this marke * to each of them prefixed may appeere; together with the accenting of euery worde throughout the whole dictionarie, for the true pronunciation of the language, as also for the diuers signification of one and the selfesame word: and for the learners ease and furtherance, the declining of all hard and irregular verbs; and for the same cause the

LITERATURE

former order of the alphabet is altered, diuers hard and vncouth phrases and speeches out of sundry of the best authors explaned, with diuers necessarie notes and especiall directions for all such as shall be desirous to attaine the perfection of the Spanish tongue. All done by Iohn Minsheu professor of languages in London. Hereunto ... is annexed an ample English Dictionarie ... by the same Iohn Minsheu. .. [bound with:] A Spanish Grammar ... [including] Pleasant and Delightful Dialogues in Spanish and English. Imprinted by Edm. Bollifant, 1599, 2 works (the second in 2 parts) in one vol., woodcut printer’s device on both titles and part title (McKerrow 293 and 305), the Dictionarie printed in 3 columns within rules, the Grammar mainly in black letter, the Dialogues with parallel texts in double columns, first few leaves browned at top edge, and the title a little stained, a few spots and stains here and there and occasional minor browning, some water-staining at the very end, a little worming in the lower margins, pp. [viii], 391; [viii], 84; [iv], 68, folio in 6s, modern calf, contrasting lettering pieces on spine,

by Period Binders, annotated throughout in a mid- to late seventeenth-century English hand (more profusely in the first quarter, but nonetheless throughout), and with various ownership inscriptions (see below), good ( STC (2nd ed.), 19620 & £2,750 19622; ESTC S115747 & S115752; Alston XII 171 & 140; not in CCPB ) First edition of Minsheu’s glorious augmentation of Percyvall. ‘Having settled in London as a language teacher, Minsheu [who was described as a rogue by Ben Jonson] compiled a Dictionarie in Spanish and English (1599), which was published together with a Spanish grammar and dialogues. They were all based on two textbooks of Spanish by Richard Percyvall, entitled Bibliotheca Hispanica (1591), the lexicon of which Minsheu considerably augmented. He refers to hostility towards his work in certain quarters, but ensured the grant of a licence to print by applying successfully to the archbishop of Canterbury. The printers set to work, so hurriedly that Minsheu, who had retired to the country “upon necessitie” ( Dictionarie ), was given no opportunity to read the proofs; consequently he promised his readers to publish a corrected and augmented version’ (Vivian Salmon in ODNB ).

The ‘vncouth phrases’ are taken from Monte Mayor (Antwerp 1580), Celestina (Antwerp 1595), &c, and there is an abundance of proverbs. The Dialogues deal with most sorts of practical matters: getting out of bed (i.e. ordering the servants about to get you dressed), dealing in jewels, fine dining (as it were), the art of conversation, the speech of servants, dealings on the Exchange, and warfare.

There are a number of ownership inscriptions. The oldest, more or less contemporary with the book, is at the foot of the title-page, but unfortunately inked over: this also obscures the publication date. Also on the title-page is an early seventeenth-century inscription: Ja. Finlay. On the verso of the title-page are the signatures of one Archibald Whytehead, who also writes various spellings of his Christian name. Below this the bold signature of Thomas Michel, with a Latin tag and the date 1683. At the end of the

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Dictionarie are scribbles in the name of a S[eño]r Guillermo Miguel, but these seem more like Michel’s trials with Spanish titles, rather than the work of an actual Spaniard; Michel has also inscribed the date 1683 in the margin of one page. The annotations are throughout the book, more numerous in the first quarter, but there is no question that the annotator went through the entire book with the meticulous attention of a scholar.

He makes corrections and additions and comments. The hand is probably that of the James Finlay whose signature appears on the title-page, though there is another hand, less prolific and not as tidy, probably Thomas Michel. The name Finlay points to a Scottish provenance, a supposition supported by the Archibald.

91.

Pope (Alexander) The Works of.

Volume I [- VI]. Edinburgh: Printed for J. Balfour, 1764, with an engraved portrait frontispiece in vol. i, one title-page a bit browned, 12mo, contemporary speckled calf, single gilt fillets on sides, spines with double gilt rules either side of the raised bands, tan lettering pieces, minor wear to extremities, very good ( ESTC T5443) £1,400 A highly attractive copy, very fresh.

92.

Prior (Matthew) Poems on Several Occasions. London: Jacob Tonson. 1718, FIRST EDITION THUS , engraved frontispiece (one corner repaired), some light toning, a few leaves moderately browned, pp. [xl], 506, [6], folio, contemporary dark brown calf, scratched and somewhat dried out, corners worn, recently rebacked, backstrip with seven raised bands, red morocco label in second compartment, good ( ESTC T75639) £500 After Prior’s release from political custody in 1716, having been held for more than a year, he planned a subscriber’s edition of his poems to restore his finances. He took careful pains over the edition and made great demands (he was disappointed at not being able to produce the run on vellum); the result was this enormous volume, more than 18 inches tall (and this is a regular subscriber’s copy – a few were on larger paper) elegantly printed, and a resounding success: some stories have him raising 4000 guineas from subscriptions, enough to keep him in comfort for the rest of his life. It prints for the first time his long poems ‘Alma, or the Progress of the Mind’ and ‘Solomon’, as well as the poems in his earlier books (the 1707 piracy, 1709, 1711, etc.) with the same general title, revised and reordered.

93.

Quarles (Francis) The Historie of Samson. Printed by M.F. for Iohn Marriott, 1631,

FIRST EDITION , browned and soiled, running head occasionally shaved, pp. [viii],

142, [2], 4to, modern sprinkled calf, early inscription of ‘William Quarles’ (possibly Francis’s nephew, great-nephew, or great-great-nephew of that name) to old binder’s blank, sound ( ESTC S115482) £2,000

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The first edition of the last entry in Quarles’ quartet of narrative poems on biblical figures, following Jonah, Esther, and Job. Immediately after this poem appeared they were gathered up and thereafter published together, so this is in fact the sole edition of Samson on its own, and a scarce one – ESTC lists just three UK copies (Edinburgh, Bodleian, and Merton College, although there are also two copies in the BL) and five in the USA (Folger, Huntington, Illinois, Texas, and Yale).

‘Quarles is “an author not of such little merit as generally has been supposed. He is often eloquent and often extremely pathetic.” – Rev. H.T. Todd... In this elaborate work, among several extravagancies indeed of imagery and expression, are some spirited passages’ (Lowndes). ‘This queer, quaint, odd volume of rhymes is far from despicable. Kitto frequently quotes Quarles upon Samson, and says of him that he was a poet of no mean order. We are glad to have his testimony to confirm our own opinion. Refined tastes will be offended, but those who wish for quaint thought will be gratified. The book is very rare’ (Spurgeon, Commenting & Commentaries, 260).

94.

Rabelais (François) The Works of Francis Rabelais. Translated from the French, and illustrated with explanatory notes, by M. le du Chat, and others. In four volumes. Printed for T. Evans, 1784, engraved frontispiece in each vol. and engraved portrait of the author on title of vol. i (printer’s monogram in its place in the others), small hole in one leaf in vol. iv with the loss of a couple of letters, one or two small ink or rust spots here and there, pp. [viii], cxx, 121-347; [vi], vi, [7-] 360; [vii], 359; [viii], 340, 12mo, contemporary tree calf, flat spines richly and elegantly gilt, red lettering pieces and oval red numbering pieces, minimal wear, book-plate inside the front covers of Robert Montgomery of Conway House (Co. Donegal) and his bold signature on the title-pages with a note of his acquisition of the set in London in August 1802, very good ( ESTC T13267) £950 A very attractive set. Robert Montgomery, 1780-1846, a DL and JP.

95.

with an autograph letter Reade (Charles) Peg Woffington. A Novel. Richard Bentley. 1853, FIRST EDITION , a few spots and thumb marks, small piece missing from lower margin of B1 (not affecting text), a little shaken, pp. [iv], 331, 8vo, original cobalt blue ripple grain cloth (Carter’s Variant C), sides blocked in blind with decorated border and centre-piece, backstrip blocked and lettered in gilt, binding slightly skewed, backstrip faded, slight wear to extremities, small circular book-label inside front cover of Lambton Castle, loosely inserted a brief autograph leter signed by Reade on Magdalen College notepaper, dated Jan. 25 (no year), sound (Parrish pp. 171-2; Sadleir 2011) £500

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First edition of the author’s first novel, and quite scarce. Carter’s Variant binding ‘C is a very queer affair, and I have only seen one example of it [the Parrish copy is in this binding]. It does not look secondary, since it is more gilt to the spine than B; and it must presumably be a trial, since the other conceivable alternative – a library binding – is out of the question for a first novel of which only 500 were printed’ (Carter, Binding Variants, p.

148). Though dated 1853, the book actually was published on December 17, 1852.

96.

Scott (Sir Walter) Waverley; or, ’Tis Sixty years Hence. In Three Volumes. Paris: Galignani and Didot. 1821, some very minor foxing in places, pp. viii, 239, [iv], 247, [iv], 248, 12mo., nineteenth-century green straight grained cloth, stamps on titles of the Innsbruck Jesuit College, accession number inside front cover and numbered paper labels at top inner corners of upper cover, very good (Todd & £300 Bowden p. 320) The first edition in English to be printed on the Continent, and an uncommon one.

97.

Scott (Sir Walter) Redgauntlet. A Tale of the Eighteenth Century. By the Author of Waverley. In Three Volumes. Edinburgh: Printed for Archibald Constable and Co.; and Hurst, Robinson and Co., London, 1824, FIRST EDITION , second issue (‘all cancel text now integral, apparently’), first gathering in vol. ii loosening, a few other nearly loose leaves, pp. [iv], 319; [iv], 328; [iv], 361, [4, ads.], 8vo, uncut in the original cloth-backed blue boards, recovered in paper, drab spines, blue covers, various poetical handbills used as pastedowns, printed labels on spine, worn at extremities, covers unevenly faded, inner hinges weak, sound (Todd and Bowden 178Ab) £275 ‘Redgauntlet is Scott at his very best. It contains the magnificent “Tale of Wandering Willie,” a tale which Robert Louis Stevenson says is the best short story in the language ...

Mr. John Buchan says “Wandering Willie’s Tale is one of the world’s greatest short stories by whatever test it is tried. Its verbal style is without a flaw, its structure is perfect, and it produces that intense impression of reality imaginitively transmuted which is the triumph of literary art”’ (Van Antwerp).

An oddly got up set. The original binding is supposed to be boards, rather than clothbacked as here. The recovering seems to be an early twentieth century effort to repair, and resemble, the original.

98.

Scott (Sir Walter) [Works]. Printed for Robert Cadell, Edinburgh, and Whittaker & Co., London, 1830-34, together 62 vols., with engraved titles and frontispieces in every vol., and engraved Dedication in the first vol. of the novels, foolscap 8vo, contemporary half green morocco over marbled boards, matching marbled edges, spines gilt, minor wear, very good £1,200 An attractive set. Comprises the Novels in 48 vols. (Todd & Bowden 348Ac, Final Revised Edition, Second (British) Impression); The Waverley Anecdotes: illustrative of the incidents, characters, and scenery, described in the novels and romances of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., James Cochrane and John McCrone, 1833, 2 vols.; and The Poetical Works, 12 vols.

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99.

(Sea Songs.) The Mariner’s Concert, being a New Collection of the most favorite Sea Songs, written and sung by Dibden [sic], Dignum, Fawcett, &c. and sung at the places of public amusement in the year 179[?7]. Printed by J. Evans, [1797], with a large woodcut vignette on the title, poorly printed on cheap paper with a bit consequent browning, pp. 8, 4to, early twentieth-century navy blue buckram, lettered on upper cover, slightly worn, pencil note inside front cover ‘From the library £375 of Lovat Fraser’, good ( ESTC T84939) A rare collection of Sea Songs, but 3 copies recorded in ESTC , 1 in the BL and 2 in Bodley.

It begins with ‘A Salt Eel for Mynheer’. The woodcut vignette on the title pictures a party of ladies being rowed out to a ship, and would clearly have appealed to Claude Lovat Fraser, both as designer and as an expert on chapbooks.

100. Shakespeare (William) The Works of William Shakespeare, in eight volumes.

In which the beauties observed by Pope, Warburton, and Dodd, are pointed out. Edinburgh: Printed for Bell & Bradfute, [et al.], 1795, some light browning, occasional foxing and a few small marginal paper flaws, pp. [iv], lxxii, 332; [iv], 360; [iv], 360; [iv], 406; [ii], 357, [1]; [ii], 397, [1]; [ii], 356; [ii], 370, 12mo, contemporary tree calf, spines divided by a gilt fillet, red morocco lettering pieces and small circular green morocco numbering pieces (the latter lost on vol. ii), spines rubbed, a few headcaps chipped, ownership inscriptions of George Buchanan of Ladrishmore to front pastedowns, good ( ESTC N25913; Jaggard p.507) £800 The text is ‘correctly printed from the famous Edition 1753, by Dr. Hugh Blair’ (title-page verso), but ‘but the editor [of that edition] was actually John Reid, the press corrector for the printers, Murray and Cochran’ ( ODNB ). This edition, perhaps aware of the difference, reprints the preface with attribution simply to ‘the Scots Editor’.

101. Shelley (Percy Bysshe) The Cenci. A Tragedy, in five acts. Italy: Printed for C. and J. Ollier, 1819, first and last blanks discarded, as often, some browning and spotting, one later pencil note (p. 61), pp. xiv, 104, 8vo, twentieth-century brown calf by Morell, turn-ins gilt, rebacked preserving spine, red and green lettering-pieces, old leather a bit rubbed and spine slightly chipped, good (Buxton-Foreman 56; Granniss 50; Wise p.51) £2,500 The sensational trial and execution of Beatrice Cenci in 1599 gripped Italy and became legendary, with the story circulating in manuscript for decades afterward; Shelley was inspired by one such manuscript account and by the painting of Beatrice by Reni, which he saw in 1818, and he wrote this play at a white heat immediately afterward. It was completed in only two months – fast even for Shelley, who normally spent closer to half a year on a book-length work – and within the same year as Prometheus Unbound. Only 250 copies were printed at Leghorn [Livorno] and then sent to the Olliers for sale in London, due to the lower cost of printing in Italy, and the play sold out quickly, becoming the only one of Shelley’s works which reached an official (i.e. not counting the piracies of Queen Mab ) second edition during his lifetime.

Shelley desired the play to be produced on stage and Peacock tried to arrange this, but the violence and incest of the story were not to contemporary tastes, and the manager of the

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Covent Garden Theatre refused even to show the part to Eliza O’Neill, whom Peacock imagined as Beatrice Cenci. The first staging of the play was thus a private performance on 7th May 1886, for Robert Browning on his birthday, arranged by the Shelley Society.

102. Shelley (Percy Bysshe) Queen Mab. W. Clark. 1821, FIRST PUBLISHED EDITION , final advertisement leaf present, this copy (as issued) without the dedication leaf found in some copies, a little light spotting, edges untrimmed, pp. 182, [2], 8vo, original drab paper boards, printed paper backstrip label (stained), joints a bit worn but strong, small losses from backstrip ends, some light scratches and marks, housed in a brown cloth felt-lined solander box, very good £2,000 (Granniss 19) The first published edition of Shelley’s first substantial poem, which had been earlier (1813) printed privately in a small number of copies, none for sale on account of the radical content. In 1821 the publisher William Clark found a copy and printed this edition without authorisation from either Shelley or the Society for the Prevention of Vice; as a result he was imprisoned for four months (on grounds of distribution of illegal material rather than copyright violation), but that did not stop another printer from acquiring his unsold sheets and reissuing them the following year.

Shelley had been in the habit of cutting out his name from the title and imprint of copies from the original printing before giving them away; he also regretted and would remove the verse dedication to ‘Harriet’. Some surviving copies of this 1821 edition have the dedication, but it was never present in this unsophisticated copy. Since that leaf is also found in varying locations when present, it was at best issued with only some copies and more likely added separately when available. The final advertisement leaf, also frequently lacking, is present here.

103. Shelley (Percy Bysshe) Queen Mab. Printed for the Joint Stock Book Company and Published by Richard Carlile. 1826, dedication ‘To Harriet *****’ follows text, a little foxing, pp. 133, [2], 16mo, original boards, spine slightly defective, good (Buxton Forman, A Shelley Library, no. 28) £350 An early edition, in boards. Queen Mab was pirated early and often by publishers of radical material and the dedication, which Shelley regretted, had been removed from many copies and thus not included in many of the piracies; this pocket (easilyconcealable) edition, one of four Carlile produced in the 1820s, does print it after the text.

‘Carlile was freed in November 1825, and returned to London in January 1826; he secured a new shop at 62 Fleet Street in May and set about founding a joint stock book company with the aim of promulgating radical texts at affordable prices, a financial folly which lasted only two years’ ( ODNB ). ‘In 1826 came out what the Americans call a vest-pocket edition, a minute volume bearing Carlile’s imprint once more. This, being sold at the price

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of half-a-crown, was regarded at the time as an edition for “the mechanic and labourer”; and I should think, from the general air of copies I have seen, that the radical mechanic gave it large and eager patronage’ (Buxton Forman, Vicissitudes, p. 20).

104. Shelley (Percy Bysshe) The Revolt of Islam. Printed for John Brooks, 1829, FIRST EDITION , FIRST STATE SHEETS , remainder issue (see below), lightly browned and spotted, the errata corrected in an early hand, pp. xxxii, 270, [4], 8vo, untrimmed in original boards, rubbed and a bit soiled, rebacked in calf with green morocco lettering piece, hinges relined, good £950 The publication history of this poem has led to much complication in the description of its early ‘editions’ (up to three, depending on the cataloguer, each with two variants); in fact there are six possible states but they are all from the same initial set of first-edition sheets. The original poem was published under the title of Laon & Cythna , in 1818. Due to shocking content (incest etc.) it was soon suppressed, but exists in two states – (1) a very rare first state with a flytitle quoting Pindar, and (2) a second state without that flytitle, which was being issued to meet demand while the publisher was negotiating the expurgation of the text. Later the same year, after the text was edited, a set of cancel sheets was introduced and the expurgated poem was reissued under the title The Revolt of Islam – again in two states, the point this time being only the date on the title-page: (3) 1817, incorrectly, in some copies, and (4) 1818 in others. But the publisher was not particularly conscientious about cancelling (despite his ‘moral objections’ to the text) and leftover sheets both with and without the cancels were among those which were remaindered and eventually fell into the hands of John Brooks, who published (5) the cancelled version and (6) the unexpurgated original without distinction, supplying only a new title-page.

This copy is the last of those, i.e. it contains all the sheets of the first, unexpurgated edition, without the censoring cancels, apart from the fly-title (omitted) and the title-page (replaced).

105. Shelley (Percy Bysshe) The Works ... with his life. In two volumes. Printed and Published by John Ascham ... 1834, with an portrait frontispiece in vol. i, portrait offset onto title, without half-title in vol. i, a few minor spots or stains, pp. [vi], iv, [5]-424; xxxii (The Life), xvi, [17-] 580, 12mo, contemporary burgundy hardgrained morocco, elaborate gilt and blind tooled panels on sides, flat spines gilt, pink silk doublures and end-leaves, gilt edges, short crack at foot of upper joint on vol. i, extremities slightly worn, good £500 An ‘unauthorised’ edition which preceded Mrs. Shelley’s authorised collected edition by five years. Selections from this edition were re-published as Posthumous Poems , also in 1834. It was preceded only by Benbow’s equally unauthorised edition, of which only volume one was published in 1826, and Galignani’s The Poetical Works of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats, a single volume edition first published in Paris in 1829.

‘We pity the plumage, but forget the dying bird’ 106. [Shelley (Percy Bysshe)] The Hermit of Marlow. An Address to the People on the Death of the Princess Charlotte. By The Hermit of Marlow. [Thomas Rodd.] [c.1843], single sewn gathering, title-page detached, a little frayed at gutter margin,

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publisher’s name neatly erased from verso of title-page, pp. 16, 8vo, disbound (Wise p.46; Granniss p.43) £800 The advertising for this 1843 edition states that Shelley issued twenty copies under the pseudonym of ‘the Hermit of Marlow’ of the text in 1817, none of which have survived to the present day, and that the present pamphlet was a posthumous facsimile reprint by Rodd. It would have been in character for the forever tarnished Thomas Wise to have announced the ‘discovery’ of this earlier edition, but the man himself is on record as stating that he believed the 1817 printing to be nothing but a myth, and that the 1843 edition was indeed the first printing.

Reprint or first edition, this version remains scarce itself: COPAC finds copies of this printing in a maximum of 6 locations: BL, Oxford, Cambridge, Leeds, Durham, and the Nat. Lib. Scot. This copy, though without mark of ownership, is from the library of the noted bibliophile Bent Juel-Jensen.

107. (Smart (Christopher)) Musae Seatonianae. A complete collection of the Cambridge Prize Poems, from the first institution of that Premium by the Rev. Mr. Tho. Seaton, in 1750, to the present time. To which are added, two poems, likewise written for the prize, by Mr. Bally and Mr. Scott. Printed by T. Wright for G. Pearch; 1772, FIRST EDITION , a touch of minor browning, ownership inscription of Nicolson Calvert (1816) to title, pp. [ii], vii, [1], 334, 8vo, contemporary sprinkled calf, spine divided by gilt-milled rolls, black lettering piece in second compartment, the rest with central octagonal tools containing sunbursts, rubbed, front joint splitting, ownership inscription of Henry Waldron Bradley (1886 – the son of ‘Cuthbert Bede’, £300 then at St John’s Cambridge), to front pastedown, sound ( ESTC T124642) The Seaton prize, established in 1750, is awarded to a Cambridge MA who composes the best poem in English on the attributes of the supreme being (or another sacred subject).

The first, second, third, fourth, and sixth prizes all went to Christopher Smart, bringing his writing to the attention of the literary world. Particularly significant for Smart was the attention of the publisher John Newbury, who would become his father-in-law and who arranged for Smart to be confined in the insane asylum where he wrote ‘Jubilate Agno’, now his most famous work. This, the first collection of the Seaton Prize-winning poems, also includes work by Thomas Zouch, Robert Glynn, John Hey, and Charles Jenner.

108. [Smollett (Tobias George)] The Expedition of Humphry Clinker. By the Author of Roderick Random. The Second Edition ... [Three volumes.] Printed for W. Johnston ... and B. Collins ... 1772, with half-titles and terminal blanks, pp.xv, 250; [iv], 249; [iv], 275, 12mo, contemporary calf, spines richly gilt, red lettering pieces, numbered direct (J for 1), very slightly worn, contemporary signature on flyleaves, ‘Williams’, nineteenth-century bookplate of the Rev Robert Albion Cox, and label inside front cover of Nathaniel Simmonds (bookseller) of Salisbury, very good £850 An attractive copy of Smollett’s last and most agreeable novel.

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109. (Song Sheets.) Collection of 31 Song Sheets. [London: 1790-1800,] 31 song sheets, all but 1 single sheets, the exception being an oblong folio braodside with text in three columns, 3 with woodcuts, a few browned, with traces of mounting or a little ragged (though essentially intact), mostly good £2,000 A fairly heterogenous collection of rare song sheets, for the most part unrecorded or recorded in only one or two copies in ESTC . In so far as they can be dated, they are all from the last decade of the eighteenth century. None is explicitly dated, but some have dates in the text: indeed 2 of them, under the title ‘The State of the Nation’ reproduce exactly the same text, save for the change of the year in the first line (’89 and ’94). Other refer to political events, elections and naval engagements within this period. The subject-matter cannot be very closely tied down, but roughly speaking there are 8 on love and marriage, 5 amorous or bawdy, and 6 humourous or satirical; others are harder to classify. The hard lot of the poor, corruption in high places and the absurdities of fashion are recurring themes. A full list is available on request.

‘an invaluable guide to mythological images for Keats’ 110. Spence (Joseph) Polymetis: or, An Enquiry concerning the Agreement between the Works of the Roman Poets, and the Remains of the Antient Artists. The second edition. Printed for R. and J. Dodsley, 1755, engraved portrait frontispiece and 41 other engraved plates (of which 4 are double-page), some minor spotting, plates offset onto facing pages, pp. vi, 160, 159-361, [1], folio, contemporary calf, neatly rebacked preserving original gilt spine (the gilt now somewhat worn), new green morocco lettering piece to style, boards with an elaborate stencilled frame dyed a lighter brown, marbled endpapers, some tidy repairs to corners, rubbed, bookplates £650 of Strathallen and Southouse, good ( ESTC T130824) A grand copy of the second corrected edition of perhaps the most influential work by Joseph Spence (1699-1768), who served terms as both Professor of Poetry and Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford. Spence was an unremarkable poet himself but had notable friends, including Pope, Lord Lincoln, and Robert Dodsley, and these connections enabled the travels in Europe that formed the germ of this attempt to link ancient poetry and visual arts. Lavishly produced and illustrated, it earned him a substantial sum and saw several editions, but was discredited on the scholarly stage by Lessing’s critical attentions in ‘Laokoon’. Nonetheless, it remained in use in schools especially, and it was both praised by Gibbon and, most famously, ‘proved an invaluable guide to mythological images for Keats’ ( ODNB ). Keats read the book from his school library and it was an important early inspiration; a number of images in Keats’ poems are directly traceable to the text and illustration in the book.

England’s Arch-poët 111. Spenser (Edmund) The Faerie Queen: The Shepheards Calendar: together with the other works of England’s Arch-poët ... collected into one volume, and carefully corrected. Printed by H[umphrey] L[ownes] for Mathew Lownes, 1617, title within elaborate woodcut border, large woodcut device to title of the Second Part of the Faerie Queen (this dated 1613), numerous woodcut head- and tail-pieces, some damp-staining, other minor stains and spotting, a few leaves browned, pp. [iv], 363, [1], plus blank leaf; [x], 56 plus blank leaf; 16; [14] plus blank leaf; ff. 68, printed

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in double columns, folio, early seventeenth-century calf with triple blind ruled borders on sides, twentieth-century reback in a lighter shade of morocco, spine gilt, red lettering piece, corners repaired, water stain to lower portion of boards, good (Johnson 19, all Sections B except VI, which is A, Section IV bound after Section VI; STC (2nd ed.) 23085 &c; ESTC S122304) £1,500 Second collected edition (a phrase which is accurate enough but veils a host of bibliographical complexities: see Johnson), otherwise, a reissue of STC 23084, with cancel general title page and dedication. An above average copy for condition.

‘The Faerie Queene was a new departure in the history of English poetry, being a combination of Italian romance, classical epic, and native English styles, principally derived from Chaucer. Spenser signalled this by inventing a new stanza (which has come to be known as the Spenserian stanza), a hybrid form adopted from the Scots poetry of James I, ‘rhyme royal’, and Italian ‘ottava rima’ ... Spenser’s work has had an enormous influence over the course of English poetry in the four centuries since his death. His most widely read poem has been The Faerie Queene, which any aspiring English poet has felt obliged to read carefully and imitate. But The Shepheardes Calender and much of Complaints have also had a major impact (it is one of the great clichés of literary criticism that Spenser’s shorter poems would be far better known had he not written The Faerie Queene ) ... W. B. Yeats, who edited an important selection of Spenser’s poetry in 1906, wrote an influential preface to that work arguing that Spenser has to be divided up into the sensitive poet who appreciated the beauties of Ireland and the brutal colonizer who sought to impose his narrow-minded English will on the natives. Yeats’s version of Spenser is essentially repeated in the critical works of C. S. Lewis, undoubtedly the most widely read Spenser critic of the twentieth century. Spenser featured more in the work of Irish and Scottish writers than of English at the end of the twentieth century, notably in that of Seamus Heaney, George MacBeth, and Brendan Kennelly, who regarded Spenser in the same ambiguous way as Yeats did’ (Andrew Hadfield in ODNB ).

112. [Swift (Jonathan)] Travels into several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of several Ships.

Vol. I [-IV]. Printed for Benj. Motte, 1726, frontispiece portrait (in second state) and 6 further plates, soiled and spotted in places, occasional staining, nineteenthcentury ownership stamp of James Bubb on two leaves and one plate in vol. i, an early ink sketch of Gulliver’s ship on another plate in that vol., pp. xii, 148, [6], 164; [vi], 154, [8], [155]-353, [1], 8vo, modern sprinkled calf, spines with five raised bands, black and green lettering pieces, sound ( ESTC T139450, T139452; Teerink-Scouten 290, 291) £2,000 A mixed set, the first volume being from the AA (second) edition and the second volume from the B (third) edition. The first three editions were once considered to be different issues of a single first edition. Later bibliographical analysis demonstrated that they were

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separate editions, each set from the previous, but Teerink, acknowledging the work done to identify them, still thought it ‘advisable to stick to the well established practice of calling the three 1726 editions first’, in part because both the printer and the author thought of them that way.

The owner James Bubb who has stamped his name in a few places is probably the sculptor (1782-1853); the sketch of a ship in the blank area of one of the maps is contemporaneous with the stamp and skillful enough to suggest the producer had at least some artistic training. James Bubb trained at the Royal Academy Schools at the beginning of the nineteenth century, produced the monument of Pitt the Younger in the Guildhall, and also worked on architectural sculpture around the Regent’s Park area.

A supplement to one of Teerink’s Scotch editions 113. Swift (Jonathan) The Posthumous Works. [Three volumes.] Edinburgh: Printed for John Balfour, 1766, offsetting from the binding turn-ins affecting the outer leaves at either end of all vols., pp. vi, 322; v, 345; vii, 290, 12mo, contemporary Scottish speckled calf, gilt ruled compartments on spines, tan morocco lettering pieces, vols. numbered ‘1’-‘3’ direct in gilt, a little rubbed and worn, contemporary signature ‘Leven’ at the heads of titles of vols. i-ii, later book-label of one Douglas Grant, with separately printed shelf-mark label (these only in i-ii again), good (Teerink-Scouten, 94 (part of, adding U Penn to the ESTC holdings), ESTC T228837 – transcribing date as 1866 – NLS (2 copies) and Alexander Turnbull Library only, but see also T140251, issue with vol. nos. IX-XI on the titles, NLS and BL only) £750 An issue of the Works, vols. 9-11, printed for John Balfour in the same year, with additional The Posthumous Works title-pages over the original volume title-pages: in this instance the original volume title-pages have been cancelled, together with either a half title or preliminary blank, or some such thing (two stubs). These vols. were certainly considered a separate edition by whoever commissioned the binding.

114. [Tait (John)] The Cave of Morar, The Man of Sorrows. A Legendary Tale. In Two Parts. Printed for T. Davies ... Bookseller to the Royal Academy; and sold by J. Bew, and J. Balfour, at Edinburgh, 1774, FIRST EDITION , lacking half-title, pp. [ii], 31, [1, ads], 4to, disbound, last leaf working loose, sound ( ESTC T28960) £250 John Tait (1748-1817) was a Writer to the Signet and afterwards judge of the Edinburgh police court (1805). As a young man he published poetry in Ruddiman’s Weekly Magazine, and in the London Magazine. He is possibly the John Tait, Writer to the Signet, who entertained Robert Burns in 1787, though the Burns Encyclopedia (1970) identifies that man as John Tait of Harvieston and gives his dates as 1729-1800. Tait also wrote an elegy on Robert Fergusson (d. 1774), which appeared in the latter’s posthumous Poems, 1779.

115. Tasso (Torquato) Jerusalem Delivered; An Heroick Poem: Translated from the Italian...By John Hoole. [Two volumes.] Printed for the Author: And sold by R. and J. Dodsley... 1763, FIRST EDITION OF THIS TRANSLATION , vignette titles, some browning, pp. v, [xv], xlviii, [ii], 336; [ii], 367, 8vo., contemporary sprinkled calf, rebacked in a

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different shade, backstrips with red and green morocco labels, some scratching and abrasion to old boards, cornertips renewed, good (Fleeman 63.2HT/1; Hazen p.62; Chapman & Hazen p. 146; Courtney p. 101) £450 ‘Samuel Johnson M.A.’ is prominent among the thirteen pages of subscribers. Johnson provided the Dedication, which Hazen describes as ‘one of Johnson’s best.’ According to Fleeman, there were around 600 copies printed of this first edition, and Hoole’s version went on to be very popular and frequently reprinted, becoming familiar to generations of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century readers of Tasso.

116. Tate (Nahum) Poems. Printed by T.M. for Benj. Tooke, 1677, FIRST EDITION , final blank discarded, fore-edge trimmed a little close (touching one letter of imprint on title-page but no other text), a touch of dustsoiling in places, pp. [xvi], 133, [1], 8vo, nineteenth-century mid-brown calf, boards with a decorative blind frame, rebacked preserving original backstrip, this with compartments divided into quarters by blind fillets with blind circle tools within, green morocco lettering piece, hinges neatly relined, old leather a little marked, an old thin scrape showing on front board, armorial bookplates to front endpapers, good ( ESTC R21921) £900 The first edition of the poet Nahum Tate’s (c.1652-1715) first book, a ‘collection of Poems : sixty-nine short pieces, including love lyrics, melancholy Flatmanesque reflections, and one poem (‘On the Present Corrupted State of Poetry’) which provides early evidence of his pious tendencies’ ( ODNB ). Tate succeeded Shadwell in 1692 as England’s poet laureate, and remains famous for the Tate-Brady version of the Psalms and his adaptation of King Lear. ‘His work, however, has had a consistently bad press. Though admired by some contemporaries, it was soon pilloried by Pope, Parnell, and Swift, and has subsequently

Item 116

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Item 117

LITERATURE

been subjected to almost universal contempt’ – yet, ‘some of his couplet verse attains genuine distinction; several of his religious poems still retain their currency after three centuries’ ( ODNB ).

This copy bears the bookplates of John Whitefoord Mackenzie (1794-1884), Writer to the Signet, a noted antiquary and book collector, and also the Earl of Rosebery, most likely the 5th Earl, Archibald Primrose, Gladstone’s successor as Prime Minister and himself an avid book collector.

117. Tennyson (Alfred, Lord) Timbuctoo. A Poem, which obtained the Chancellor’s Medal at the Cambridge Commencement. [Contained in: Prolusiones Academicæ praemiis annuis dignatae et in curia Cantabrigiensi recitatae comitiis maximis, Cambridge: John Smith] 1829, FIRST EDITION , a few tiny spots, pp. 41, [3], 8vo, stab-sewn, original plain wrappers discarded, title and rear blank somewhat dusty, cornertips slightly creased, good (Ashley Library Vol.VII, p.103; Hayward 245; £500 Thomson II; Tinker 2059; Wise 3) Tennyson’s second publication, and the first published under his name. Tennyson was pleasantly surprised to hear that his poem had won the Chancellor’s Medal – the first poem in blank verse to do so – and it received an effusive positive review in the Athenaeum, among other honours. This is the pamphlet which printed the five prize poems of the year (only a very few copies of ‘Timbuctoo’ were printed separately, probably at Tennyson’s request). It was issued in plain blue, green, or drab wrappers, and these must have been removed from this copy – although they left no trace whatsoever.

118. Tennyson (Alfred, Lord) Poems, chiefly lyrical. Effingham Wilson. 1830, FIRST EDITION , second state (error on p. 72 corrected, that on p. 91 not), advertisement leaf at end discarded, inscription at head of title-page, pp. [iv], 154, 8vo, [with:] Tennyson (Alfred, Lord) Poems. Edward Moxon. 1833, FIRST EDITION , half-title present, small water stain on half-title and title-page, pages edges lightly browned, advertisment leaf preceding half-title discarded, pp. [vi], 163, 8vo, uniformly bound (thought of slightly different heights) in near-contemporary horizontal fineribbed green cloth, gilt lettered direct between gilt fleurons, slight wear to head of backstrips, minor splash marks on sides, pale yellow chalked endpapers, manuscript items pasted to versos of both upper free endpapers (see note), red sprinkled edges, good (Wise 6-7) £1,500 The first editions of Tennyson’s first two books of poems published under his own name (following only Poems by Two Brothers and ‘Timbuctoo’). Positive reviews of the 1830 Poems did much to make Tennyson’s name as a poet, but the 1833 volume was less wellreceived and the critical notices combined with Hallam’s death that year to cause him to largely withdraw from the public eye until his triumphant return with his 1842 Poems (the first volume of which reprinted selections from these two books).

Both volumes belonged to a C.M. Gemmer, with a presentation inscription to her ‘from her brother Robert Bland’ at the head of the title-page of the first item, and her signature at the head of the half-title in the second. This is Caroline M. Gemmer, herself a minor poet

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(mostly of verse for children, although she was also a correspondent of Christina Rossetti) who published under the pseudonym Gerda Fay. Both volumes were issued in boards, so it was probably Gemmer that had the volumes uniformly bound (and labelled ‘Vol. I’ and ‘Vol. II’) in a style that closely resembles the publisher’s cloth bindings of the time.

The small piece of paper pasted to the verso of the upper free endpaper of the 1830 ‘Poems’ is inscribed ‘A Tennyson. 10. St. James’s Square. Cheltenham.’ in Tennyson’s distinctive hand. Tennyson lived there while taking a hydrotherapy cure nearby in the early 1840s, after the breaking off of his first engagement and a failed speculation in a wood-carving company sent him into such a deep depression his family feared for his life.

As he was then unmarried and his two-volume Poems were only just bringing him fame this slip may have been a substitute for a calling card or something similar during his stay there. The 1833 Poems has pasted to its flyleaf the front of an envelope, with a franked penny red stamp, addressed to ‘F.G.C. Post Office. High Street. Portland Town. Regent’s Park. London’. The hand is not dissimilar to, but is probably not, Tennyson’s. The date of the frank is not legible.

119. Tennyson (Alfred, Lord) Gareth and Lynette etc. Strahan, 1872, FIRST EDITION , halftitle inscribed ‘From the Author’ in Tennyson’s distinctive hand, publisher’s slip with reviews of Locker’s London Lyrics tipped on to front free endpaper, pp. [vi], 136, 10 (publisher’s catalogue), foolscap 8vo, original fine bead-grain green cloth, sides with blind Greek key border, pale yellow chalked endpapers, spine lettered in gilt, slightly worn, a small amount of ?ink staining on upper cover, very good (Thomson LXII; Tinker 2089; Wise Part I, Editiones Principes 125) £200 The third series of the Idylls, containing also with the title poem ‘The Last Tournament, slightly altered from the version first published in the Contemporary.

120. Tennyson (Alfred, Lord) Poetical Works. Macmillan and Co. 1907, pp. viii, 646, [2], 8vo, contemporary red morocco prize binding by Bickers, boards with elaborate gilt frames enclosing the gilt arms of Highgate School, spine gilt in compartments, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt, prize label dated 1909 awarding the book to F.A. Prescott, joints and endcaps a touch rubbed, tiny splits at £150 ends of front joint, very good An attractive prize binding.

121. Thackeray (William Makepeace) The Great Hoggarty Diamond. [Bound after:] Vanity Fair. A Novel without a Hero. New York: Harper and Brothers. [1848,] FIRST EDITION IN BOOK FORM of the ‘Great Hoggarty Diamond’, final ads discarded, 32 plates in ‘Vanity Fair’, foxed throughout (mostly lightly), plates toned, the upper blank corner of the illustrated title to vol. i torn away, some edges creased, pp. viii, [9]-332, [4], 67, 78-84 (as called for), 8vo., bound together in slightly later half dark red roan, marbled boards and endpapers, backstrip with four raised bands, second

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compartment gilt lettered direct, rubbed, a little chipping to backstrip, cornertips worn, morocco booklabel of Estelle Doheny, sound (Van Duzer 88) £1,500 The scarce first book-form edition of Thackeray’s The Great Hoggarty Diamond , originally published serially in Fraser’s Magazine in 1841. This printing is based on the serial and hence is slightly different from the first English edition, which would be published in London the following year as The History of Samuel Titmarsh and the Great Hoggarty Diamond. This version is much scarcer than the first English edition: according to Van Duzer, Dickson could locate only one copy, in the Boston Athenaeum, and there are no copies now listed in COPAC . ABPC records only four appearances at auction, all in America, and none after 1989.

Bound before it is a later printing of the first American edition of Vanity Fair, with no date on the title but with publisher’s ads including works issued in the early 1850s.

Presentation copy with drawings 122. Thaxter (Celia) The Cruise of the Mystery and other Poems. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1886, FIRST EDITION , inscribed presentation copy, minor damp-staining in the upper margin, pp. [iv], iv, [5-]121, small 8vo, contemporary limp hard-grained dark green morocco, spine letttered in gilt direct, minor wear to extremities, recto of first blank leaf inscribed ‘Clara E.C. Waters, with love from Celia Thaxter, Dec. 1886, and the volume embellished with 8 watercolour drawing by the author, tipped in at the end a brief, poignant authograph letter signed, preserved in a cloth folding box, very good £750 A fine presentation copy of a late work by one of America’s favorite authors of the late nineteenth century. Thaxter’s hands were never idle and she was amongst other things a brilliant gardener. Her love of flowers found a new lease of life when she took up watercolours. The drawing here are mostly of flowers; that accompanying ‘In Tuscany’ is of a spray of olives, ‘Faith’ features a lighthouse, presumably the one she grew up in on the Isles of Shoals. The autograph letter at the end is addressed to ‘My dear friend’, is dated Jan 22nd [18]91, and urges her (assuming this is the Clara to who the book was presented) to visit. Clara Erskine Clement Waters, 1834-1916, was a writer on art.

123. Thomson (James) The Seasons. Printed for A. Millar. 1744, FIRST EDITION THUS , four engraved plates (included in pagination), title page in red and black, 10 pp. ‘Critical Observations’ from a later edition bound before text, errata-slip pasted to final page, a few minor spots, pp. [vi], [iii]-xii, [ii], 243, [1], 12mo., early twentieth-century half calf, textured purple cloth boards, backstrip divided by a gilt roll, red morocco label in second compartment, sprinkled edges, a bit darkened, cornertips just worn, good £120 ( ESTC T143912) Thomson’s The Seasons was first collected in 1730. In a fever of activity fourteen years later he wrote several other works and produced this ‘very thorough revision’ of his most famous book. It has been ‘enlarged to include more georgic material...more tropical excursions (on fruits, beasts, sandstorms, hurricanes, plagues), and more compliments to opposition politicians. Additionally, hundreds of small revisions improved the precision, harmony, or vividness’ ( ODNB ).

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124. Verne (Jules) The Master of the World. A Tale of Mystery and Marvel. Sampson Low, Marston & Co. [1914,] FIRST ENGLISH BOOK-FORM EDITION , 30 plates, a neat early pen scribble to half-title and front endpapers, one plate and facing page with a small stain, a little light foxing to edges, pp. 317, [3], 8vo, original green cloth, pictorial spine and front board blocked in colour, spine also lettered in gilt (dulled), a little rubbed (causing slight loss to colouring on front board), spots of wear to joint ends and a short split at head of spine, good £950 One of Verne’s last novels – originally published in French in 1904, it was only followed by Invasion of the Sea before the author’s death in March 1905. A poor-quality anonymous translation was included as part of a 1911 New York set of Verne’s works, and then this much better translation (also anonymous, but by Cranstoun Metcalfe) was serialised in the Boy’s Own Paper before this first publication in book format. The cover departs from the traditional black-and-gilt pictorial blocking style of earlier Verne translations with a dramatic colour gradient.

125. [Ward (Robert Plummer)] Illustrations of Human Life by the author of “Tremaine” and “De Vere” ... Atticus St. Lawrence. In three volumes. Henry Colburn. 1837, FIRST EDITION , pp. viii, 359; viii, 324; [iv], 301, 8vo, contemporary dark green half morocco, the backstrips panelled with gilt fillets and repeated leafy and drawerhandle tools, marbled boards, slightly rubbed, a.e.g., bookplates of Thomas Smith, good (Sadleir 3299; Wolff 70290) £250 Ward was educated at Christchurch, Oxford and trained in the law. On the personal recommendation of William Pitt he was offered a seat in the House of Commons for the Lowther pocket borough of Cockermouth in June 1802.

126. Wilde (Oscar) Ravenna. [Newdigate Prize Poem] Recited in the Theatre, Oxford, June 26, 1878. Oxford: Thos. Shrimpton and Son, 1878, FIRST EDITION , pp. 16, 8vo, original printed wrappers, slight discolouration around the edges, spine a little flaky, preserved in a paper chemise and card slip-in case covered in light blue buckram around the edges, good (Mason 301, pp. 241-49) £1,250 Wilde’s first work ‘issued in book form’ (Stuart Mason), although only a slim pamphlet.

‘During a vacation ramble in 1877 Wilde started for Greece, and visiting Ravenna by chance on the way, he obtained material for a poem on that ancient city, and singularly enough “Ravenna” was afterwards given out as the topic for the Newdigate competition’ (Walter Hamilton, The Aesthetic Movement in England , quoted by Mason).

‘Wilde put aside his Catholic inclinations into work the poem the triumphal return of Victor Emmanuel to Rome in 1871, when the king ousted Pius IX from the Quirinal Palace. Hunter Blair, on reading the passage, remonstrated that Wilde had once called the

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dethroned Pope, “the prisoner shepherd of the Church of God,” but Wilde replied with disarming candour: “Don’t be angry Dunskie. You must know that I would never, never have won the Newdigate if I had taken the Pope’s side against the King’s”’ (Ellman p. 88).

127. Wilde (Oscar) A House of Pomegranates. The Design & Decoration of this book by C. Ricketts and Ch. Shannon. James R. Osgood, McIlvane & Co., 1891, FIRST EDITION , with 4 plates (see below) and decorations throughout, a little spotting at either end, one or two finger marks, pp. [x], [158], [1], 4to, uncut in the original green cloth backed tan boards, the upper cover with pictorial design blocked in red and gilt, spine lettered in gilt, decorated endpapers, covers a bit soiled and worn £850 at extremities, good (Mason 347) One of 1,000 copies printed and a comparatively good copy. The plates here are a little more distinct than usual, but the cloth has succumbed somewhat to the dust to which it seems to be particularly attracted.

‘There are four full-page illustrations by C. H. Shannon, facing each of which is inserted a blank leaf having on its reverse a small design by C. Ricketts facing the first page of each tale – namely, between the last preliminary leaf (p. viii) and the first page of the text; between pp. 26 and 27, 62 and 63, 128 and 129. These four plates were printed in Paris by some “improved” process. After the book was finished and bound it was noticed that a dusty deposit had formed on each plate, probably owing to some chemical impurity either in the printer’s ink or in the chalky paper used. To take off this deposit each plate was rubbed with soft flannel, which removed the surface and left the reproductions faint and in some cases almost obliterated’ (Mason, pp. 364-5). Contains four ‘beautiful’ (according to the Contents) short stories: ‘The Young King’ (which first appeared in The Lady’s Pictorial, Christmas Number, 1888), ‘The Birthday of the Infanta’ (which first appeared in Paris Illustré, March 30, 1889), ‘The Fisherman and His Soul’, and ‘The Star-Child’.

128. Wordsworth (William) Poems, in two volumes. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme.

1807, FIRST EDITION , half-titles discarded, a touch of light spotting, pp. [vi], 158, [2]; [vi], 170, 12mo, turn-of-the-twentieth-century polished biscuit calf by Worsfold, rubbed, spines darkened, joints cracked and boards just holding, some wear to spine ends, marbled endpapers, a.e.g., sound (Wise 8; Healey 19; Two Lake Poets, p. 12) £2,000 Starting in December 1801 Wordsworth began a period of astonishing productivity, writing many of what are now his most famous and best-loved poems. They were printed in 1807 in these two small volumes, which include ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’, the Immortality Ode, ‘Composed upon Westminster Bridge’, ‘The world is too much with us’, ‘London, 1802’ (‘Milton! thou shouldst be living...’), &c. &c. The work is now considered one of the best volumes of one author’s poetry ever compiled, containing an astonishing number of the finest poems in English; even more astonishing, however, is the response of Wordsworth’s contemporaries: ‘this varied, original collection ought to have been

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a triumph. It was a disaster’ ( ODNB ). Reviews were almost wholly negative, deriding Wordsworth’s simple subjects as triviality – one of the least negative responses came from Byron, in Monthly Literary Recreations, comparing the volume unfavourably to Lyrical Ballads but admitting that some poems had a natural beauty. It was only with his Poems of 1815 that Wordsworth’s reputation turned around and rose again, steadily increasing thereafter and exonerating this book from its initial critical reception.

Inscribed to Irish poet Eliza Hamilton 129. Wordsworth (William) Yarrow revisited, and other Poems. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longman. 1835, FIRST EDITION , PRESENTATION COPY, inscribed by the author ‘To Eliza M. Hamilton as a token of affectionate esteem from WM Wordsworth’ on a slip of paper pasted on to the verso of the title, and with ‘From the Author’ written on the half-title by a publisher’s clerk, erratum slip tipped in, ads discarded, pp. xvi, 349, [1], 12mo, slightly later nineteenth-century olive pebble grain morocco by Tuckett (‘binder to the Queen’), the backstrip panelled and ruled in gilt and infilled with volutes and other tools, lettered in gilt in the second compartment, the sides with triple gilt fillet borders, an inner panel with gilt cornerpieces and central panels of curving lines, a.e.g., marbled endpapers, booklabel of J.O. Edwards, small scrape to upper board, extremities slightly rubbed, good (Healey 86; Sterling 1028; Tinker 2350; Wise 23; Two Lake £3,500 Poets, p. 29) In 1831 Wordsworth had written to a friend that ‘the Muse has forsaken me’, but any abandonment was only temporary: he continued to write throughout the next few years, and had accumulated enough for this collection by 1835. He remained active despite his age, following this volume with one more book of poems (1842, combining old and new material), and becoming Poet Laureate at Victoria’s insistence in 1843.

This volume the poet inscribed to a fellow poet, Eliza M. Hamilton (1807-1851) of Dublin. Her brother William, the astronomer Royal of Ireland, was ‘a brilliant linguist and mathematical genius... [and] also a gifted versifier who none the less came to admit that his sister Eliza was the poet, encouraging her to show her work to his friend Wordsworth, who not only upheld his judgement but offered valuable criticism and advice in a series of letters and, later, interviews, when Eliza travelled with William to Rydal Mount in the summer of 1830’ ( ODNB ). Eliza published poems in the Dublin Literary Gazette and Dublin University Magazine, as well as issuing a solo volume in 1838, and she ‘was virtually unique as a woman poet of the Romantic period with an acute understanding of astronomical principles’ ( ODNB ).

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Arguably the century’s greatest long poem 130. Young (Edward) Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality, A Poem. To which is added A Paraphrase on Part of the Book of Job, and the Last day ... With the Life of the Author. Printed for William Lane at the Minerva Press, 1793, with an engraved frontispiece, pp. [xiv], 300, 12mo, contemporary mottled calf, flat spine gilt in compartments, red lettering piece, minor rubbing, neat inscription inside front cover ‘Notting Hill House Boarding School. This Book was presented to Miss Ann Pocock, At the Midsummer Vacation 1794, In Approbation of her Uniform good Conduct’, later armorial bookplate of J. Hornsby Wright opposite, very good (Not in Blakey; ESTC T120212) £550 A scarce edition, with only 4 copies recorded in the UK, 5 in the US. ‘Pursuing consolation for the loss of his stepdaughter in 1736 and his wife and sonin-law in 1740, Young wrote The Complaint, or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality (1742-6), arguably the century’s greatest long poem. Its nine ‘Nights’, issued serially in quartos tending to greater length, total nearly 10,000 lines of blank verse.

The first of these maintain the quasi-autobiographical fiction of a nocturnal speaker lamenting the loss of child, spouse, and friend and finding Christian consolation.

Increasingly the speaker turns to theodicy, Christian apologetics, and conversion… With the first Nights immensely popular (Nights 1-5 all quickly required multiple editions), Young was induced to restate copiously and refine his points, overextending the work until its popularity fell off, though recent criticism has focused on these later Nights. Over 100 collected editions of the Night-Thoughts were published in the next five decades, including translations in most European languages, many in German ... Illustrated by Blake [1797] and read closely by Wordsworth and Coleridge, the poem remained popular among middle-class readers well into the 1800s’ ( ODNB ).

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Item 2

Blackwell’s Rare Books 48-51 Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3BQ Direct Telephone: +44 (0) 1865 333555 Switchboard: +44 (0) 1865 792792 Email: rarebooks@blackwell.co.uk Fax: +44 (0) 1865 794143 www.blackwell.co.uk/ rarebooks Our premises are in the main Blackwell bookstore at 48-51 Broad Street, one of the largest and best known in the world, housing over 200,000 new book titles, covering every subject, discipline and interest, as well as a large secondhand books department. There is lift access to each floor. The bookstore is in the centre of the city, opposite the Bodleian Library and Sheldonian Theatre, and close to several of the colleges and other university buildings, with on street parking close by.

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Spring 2012

Front cover illustration: Item 33

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