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TEFFONT 31
Mainly Literature
four novels owned by king’s mistresses
Louis XIV’s childhood translation of Caesar
rants against prostitutes in London and Paris
English manuscript novel
first appearance of poems by Congreve and Aphra Behn
Jane Brereton’s poem on Newton
communist utopia by Tiphaigne de la Roche
2013
Works By Tiphaigne De La Roche
81.
79.
80.
77.
78.
1. ALGAROTTI, Francesco, conte (1712-1764).
CHASTELLUX, François Jean, marquis de (1734-1788), translator.
ESSAI SUR L'OPÉRA, traduit de l’Italien du Comte Algarotti; par M. ***. chez
Ruault, Libraire, rue de la Harpe, près de la rue Serpente. A Pisa; et se trouve à Paris,
1773.
FIRST EDITION IN FRENCH. 8vo, (192 x 120mm), pp. viii, 190, with central vignette on the
title-page, a few small marginal tears, in contemporary mottled calf, extremities a little worn, flat spine
gilt in compartments, red morocco label lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers, red edges.
£750
The scarce first edition in French of Algarotti’s Saggio sopra l’opera in musica, 1755, one
of the most influential works on operatic dramaturgy and production of the eighteenth
century. In the original dedication, to Baron Svertz, not reproduced in this edition,
Algarotti acknowledged his debt to the court theatre of Frederick the Great and
claimed that his treatise was little more than a description of current theatrical practice
there. Frederick’s own Montezuma, on the composition of which he had collaborated
with Algarotti over a number of years, had finally been set to music and performed in
1755, the same year that Algarotti’s treatise was published.
This French translation is by the Marquis de Chastellux, the maréchal-philosophe who
distinguished himself during the War of American Independence. Almost as much a
polymath as Algarotti himself and with a great knowledge of musical aesthetics,
Chastellux was the ideal person to translate this work: ‘Philosophe, critique de l’art,
savant, il s’entéresse à tout, aux sciences économiques et sociales, au magnétisme
animal, il compose des comédies et des éloges académiques, publie le récit de ses
voyages, et prend parti dans les controverses entre partisans de Gluck et ceux de
Piccinni’ (DLF). This edition contains a six-page translator’s preface in which
Chastellux praises Algarotti’s other works and speaks of their favourable reception in
France; he also explains his use of notes (pp. 175-190) in order to keep the translation
simple and readable. The dedication to this edition is to ‘Guillaume Pitt, aujourd’hui
Comte de Chattaam’; it was presumably written by Algarotti for the second edition of
1763 and is signed ‘François Algarotti, A Pise, ce 18 Décembre 1762’. There is also a
six-page introduction. The text is followed by Enée à Troye, opéra (pp. 107-116) and
Iphigénie en Aulide, opéra (pp. 117-174), both written in French by Algarotti.
OCLC lists DLC, Harvard, Michigan, Minnesota, Princeton and Eastman School of
Music.
in contemporary blue morocco
2. ARGENS, Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, marquis d’ (1704-1771).
MÉMOIRES HISTORIQUES ET SECRETS, concernant les amours des rois de
France. Avec quelques autres piéces dont on verra les Titres en la Page suivante. A
Paris [ie Amsterdam] Vis à vis le Cheval de Bronze. 1739.
FIRST EDITION. 12mo, (132 x 72mm), pp. vi, 303, [1], title-page printed in red and black, in
contemporary blue morocco, triple gilt filet to covers, flat spine gilt in compartments, lettered in gilt,
simple floral dentelles, marbled endpapers, gilt edges, pink silk marker.
£2000
A handsome copy of this scurrilous quasihistorical work by the marquis d’Argens. The
material for this collection of pieces was
assembled from various sources, most notably
Galanteries des Rois de France, Paris 1731 by Henri
Sauval (1623-1676), first published in Histoire et
Recherches des antiquités de la ville de Paris, Paris
1724. Argens’ portrayal of the romantic and
sexual entanglements of the kings of France is
followed by three other texts exposing secret
happenings in the annals of French history:
‘Les Réflexions Historiques sur la mort de
Henri le Grand’, ‘Le Mal de Naples, son origine
& ses progrès en France’ (the ‘mal de Naples’
being syphilis) and ‘Trésors des Rois de
France’. Another edition was published in
1747, of which OCLC lists UCLA only.
OCLC lists BN, a handful of other copies in
continental Europe and the Rylands. Copac
adds Cambridge and Birmingham.
Cioranescu 8328; Gay III, 172.
'the most distinguished novelist
ever connected with the Minerva Press'
3. BAGE, Robert (1728-1801).
SCHINDELMAYER, R., translator.
DER MENSCH OHNE MASKE,
ein Roman nach dem Englischen eines
hinterlassenen Manuscripts vom Verfasser von Yoricks empfindsamen Reisen durch
Frankreich und Italien: Zwey Theile. 1799.
FIRST EDITION OF THIS GERMAN TRANSLATION. Two volumes in one, 8vo, (173 x
96mm), engraved frontispiece by R. Schindelmayer, engraved title-page and pp. 176; 212, the final
two preliminary leaves (*2 and *3) misbound after p. 210 of the second volume, in contemporary
paper-covered wooden boards, mottled brown paper back-strip, significantly chipped and worn, headcap missing, a small chip in the upper spine, much of the back-strip worn to reveal the blue paper
covering underneath, orange paper printed label: hardly an attractive binding, and not in top condition,
but an authentic one, unrestored.
£2250
A very rare German translation of Bage’s brilliant radical novel, Man as He Is, first
published by the Minerva Press in 1792 and second only to his masterpiece and final
work, Hermsprong, also Minerva Press, 1796. Published in the years following the
French Revolution, Bage’s two last novels gained him considerable hostile press in
England for what was seen as a dangerous liberalism, particularly in relation to sexual
morality.
It is interesting that he was so widely published in Europe: half of his novels were
translated into French and a staggering five out of six appeared in German, something
that may have been facilitated by Bage’s paper-making contacts in Germany.
Furthermore, there were two German translations of the present work, the present
one and the earlier Der Mensch wie er ist, Berlin, Stettin, 1798 (OCLC lists BL only).
The present edition contains both author’s preface and a two-page translator’s preface,
both misbound towards the end of the text.
Bage, a paper manufacturer from the midlands, was a brilliant novelist, three of
whose novels (James Wallace, 1788, Man as He Is, 1792 and Hermsprong, 1796) were
printed at the Minerva Press (‘undoubtedly the most distinguished novelist ever
connected with the Minerva Press’, says Blakey). Influenced by the ideas of the French
revolution, Bage’s novels are satirical and revolutionary, reminiscent of the writings of
William Godwin and Thomas Holcroft. Apart from his incisive satire of the social
follies of the time, Bage must also be noted for the brilliant lightness of his
perceptions of character, for 'that half-acid, half-tolerant revelation of the permanent
foibles of human nature in which Bage anticipated Jane Austen' (Blakey p. 64).
Although three of Bage's earlier novels were included by Scott in Balantyne's
Novelists' Library, he included neither Man as He Is nor Hermpsrong, objecting mainly
to 'the mad philosophy'. Bage's political opinions were too extreme for Scott who
objected to his tendency to locate virtue and generosity too exclusively in the lower
classes. Bage also applied equal standards to men and women and his heroines enjoy a
measure of sexual as well as intellectual freedom. All of which made the novels too
subversive for Scott, whose censorial selection procedures may have done their bit to
keep Bage out of the main-stream.
'In their keen perception of the absurdities of society, and their shrewd strokes of
character, Bage's novels are far superior to the common run of Minerva publications.
The whole tone of his work, also, is particularly refreshing after the inflated sentiment
or perfervid horrors of young ladies and their 'first literary attempts', for Bage had a
vigorous and original mind ... His sound judgement of character, and the pleasing
irony of his style, give him at least a place in the company of Fielding, Austen and
Thackeray' (Blakey, p. 65).
Thomas Holcroft reviewed Man as He Is: ‘when a novel has the power of playing on
the fancy, interesting the affections, and teaching moral and political truth, we imagine
that we are capable of feeling these beauties, and that we have liberality enough to
announce these to the world. Of this superior kind, is the novel now before us;
which, though far from being without faults, gave us great pleasure, and is such as we
can warmly recommend to readers of taste, science, and sentiment. In narrating his
fabulous adventures, the author frequently leads us through the regions of
metaphysics, politics, and even theology; in which, however, he seldom remains long
enough to fatigue the attention, or to pall the appetite, of his reader’ (Monthly Review,
1793).
See Garside, Raven & Schöwerling 1792:29 (listing the other German translation
only); Blakey, The Minerva Press, 1790-1820, p. 159 and pp. 62-65; J.M.S. Tompkins, The
Popular Novel in England, 1770-1800, pp. 193-199; this translation not in Osborne, ‘A
Preliminary Survey for a Bibliography of the novels of Robert Bage’, Book Handbook,
1951.
OCLC lists UCLA and Duke University only.
4. BERNARD, Jean-Frédéric (1690-1752).
MIRABAUD, Jean-Baptiste de (1675-1760).
LE MASCRIER, Jean-Baptiste (1697-1760).
LE MONDE, SON ORIGINE, ET SON ANTIQUITÉ. [-DE L’AME ET DE SON
IMMORTALITÉ - ESSAI SUR LA CHRONOLOGIE.] Première [Seconde] Partie.
A Londres. 1751.
FIRST EDITION. Three parts in one volume, 12mo, (168 x 100mm), pp. xii, 244; [iv], 172;
72, some leaves at the end dust-soiled on the lower edge, prior to binding, in contemporary polished
calf, triple filet to covers, spine gilt with brown morocco label lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers, gilt
edges, with the decorative engraved bookplate of the ‘Bibliothèque de Henri Tardivi’.
£1000
A handsome copy of this scarce materialist diatribe in three parts by three different
authors. The first part, Le Monde, son Origine et son Antiquité is by Jean-Frédéric
Bernard, an exiled French protestant who set up as an editor and bookseller in the
Netherlands, where he published a number of books on different subjects. The
second part, which has its own separate title page, is in two sections, firstly De L’Ame,
et de son Immortalité, also Londres, 1751, by Jean-Baptiste de Mirabaud. The final
section, with its own register and drop-head title: ‘Essai sur la Chronologie’, is by JeanBaptiste Le Mascrier.
‘L’entreprise de Mirabaud parait d’une cohérence exemplaire, par sa méthode et par
la fin systématique qu’elle poursuit. Elle résume un aspect essentiel de la pensée
matérialiste du début du XVIIIème siècle’ (Olivier Bloch, Le Matérialisme du XVIIIème
siècle et la littérature clandestine, p. 98).
Darnton, The Corpus of Clandestine Literature in France 1769-1789, no. 452; Cioranescu
11384 & 45100-45101 & 39047-39048.
ESTC n30361, well held in France and the UK; California State, Wisconsin-Madison,
DLC, UCLA, Chicago and North Carolina in America. OCLC adds Princeton and
Stanford.
5. BERTRAND, Jean Elie (1713-1797).
CARRARD, Benjamin Samuel Georges (b. 1704).
CORREVON, Gabriel Seigneux de (1695-1775), & others.
ESSAYS ON THE SPIRIT OF LEGISLATION, in the encouragement of
Agriculture, Population, Manufactures, and Commerce. Containing observations on
the Political Systems at present pursued in various Countries of Europe, for the
Advancement of those essential Interests. Interspersed with various remarks on the
practice of Agriculture. Societies of Agriculture. Rewards. Bounties. The Police.
Luxury. Industry. Machines. Exportation. Taxes. Inoculation. Marriage. Naturalization,
&c. Translated from the original French, which gained the Premiums offered by the
Society of Berne in Switzerland, for the best Compositions on this Subject. London:
printed for W. Nicoll, at No. 51, in St. Paul’s Church-Yard; and G. Robinson, at No.
25, in Pater-noster-Row. 1772.
FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH. 8vo, (202 x 120mm), pp. xi, [i], 479, [1], with pencil notes in
the text and John Borthwick’s pencil ownership inscription on the title page, further notes, in pencil
and ink, on the endpapers, unconnected with the text (‘Things to be done - 1. Offices to be built 2.
South Building at the House etc), in contemporary English calf, spine with raised bands, simply ruled
in gilt, red morocco label lettered in gilt, ‘Essays on Legislation’, very small nick in the head of spine
but generally an excellent copy, with the heraldic bookplate of John Borthwick of Crookston on the
verso of the title-page.
£900
The first edition in English of Essais sur l’esprit de la législation favorable à l’agriculture, à la
population, au commerce, aux arts et aux métiers [pièces couronnées par la Société économique de
Berne], Berne, Société typographique, 1766.
The opening essay is by Jean Elie
Bertrand (1713-1797), theologian, correspondent of Voltaire and Linnaeus and prolific
author on a wide variety of subjects from linguistics to hydrography. Two other essays
are the Swiss writers Benjamin Samuel Georges Carrard (b. 1704) and Gabriel
Seigneux de Correvon (1695-1775).
‘The Original Essays, of which a Translation is now offered to the Public, were
published in the Memoirs collected by the Oeconomical Society of Berne; but they
have been received with such Avidity throughout Europe, as to be published in several
Places distinct from the other Memoirs; besides being translated into almost every
European language. The Merit of the Works is too great to make a Panegyric
necessary here: They abound with original and spirited Observations, sufficient in
themselves to recommend them. That they will prove particularly agreeable to the
English Reader cannot be doubted, from the numerous Instances and Illustrations of
the Arguments, drawn from the Conduct and State of this Kingdom, as well as from
the noble Spirit of Liberty diffused throughout them’ (Translator’s Preface).
ESTC t183391; Higgs 5445; Goldsmiths 10829.
6. BOUDARD, Jean Baptiste (1710-1768).
ICONOLOGIE Tirée de divers Auteurs. Ouvrage utile aux Gens de Lettres, aux
Poëtes, aux Artistes, & généralement à tous les Amateurs des Beaux-Arts. Par J.B.
Boudard. Tome Premier [-Troisième]. chez Jean-Thomas de Trattnern, Imprimeur et
Libraire de la Cour. Vienne, 1766.
SECOND EDITION. Three volumes, 8vo, (201 x 118mm), pp. [xvi], 17-32, 1-16 (gathering A
misbound after gathering B), 33-203, [1], [8] table of contents, F1, G2 and G3 torn without loss;
[ii], 219, [8], [1]; [vi], 208, [8] table of contents; text printed within a ruled border throughout, in
contemporary mottled calf, extremities worn, head and foot of spines worn, spines gilt in compartments,
red morocco labels lettered in gilt, numbered in another compartment but gilt worn.
£1750
A wonderful collection of 630 engravings by the sculptor Jean Baptiste Boudard. First
published in three folio volumes in Parma in 1759, with text in Italian and French, this
first octavo edition is in French only. This copy, though a little scruffy, has the merit
of being bound in three separate volumes, which is unusual for this work and makes it
much easier to use.
Following Boudard’s introduction, ‘Raisonnement necessaire à l’intelligence de
l’Iconologie’ (pp. iii-xvi), the icons are presented one per page, in alphabetical order
throughout the three volumes. Each engraved image, placed at the top of the page, is
labelled and has text beneath it, giving a description of its appearance, necessary
attributes and symbolism. The illustrations depict a large variety of subjects, including
virtues and vices, the planets, the arts and sciences, nymphs, hours of the day and
night, months of the year, the muses and parts of the world.
OCLC lists Cambridge, NLS, Getty, Chicago, Illinois, Minnesota, Kent and Texas.
7. BOULANGER, Nicolas Antoine (1722-1759).
GOUVERNEMENT. Ouvrage postume de feu Mr. B.I.D.P. et C. 1776. Londres.
FIRST EDITION IN BOOK FORM. 8vo, (162 x 95mm), pp. [ii], [3]-111, occasional damp-
staining, in contemporary mottled calf, spine simply gilt, red morocco label lettered in gilt, joints
splitting along upper and lower sections, wormhole towards the foot of the spine, red endpapers and
edges, with a page of manuscript notes on the front endpaper.
£2000
The scarce first separate edition of this key philosophical examination of the nature of
government by Nicolas Antoine Boulanger, engineer and encyclopédiste. The letters on
the title-page, ‘feu Mr. B.I.D.P. et C.’ stand for [the late] ‘Mr. Boulanger, Ingénieur des
Ponts & Chaussées’ and are in the same format as used on Recherches sur l’origine du
despotisme oriental, Geneva 1761, which was written by Holbach, but passed off as a
posthumous work by Boulanger.
The son of a Paris paper merchant, Boulanger studied mathematics, geology and
ancient and oriental languages. In his philosophical works he sought to explain human
behaviour, in particular superstitious and religious events, in terms of the natural world
and cataclysmic experiences. ‘Ce n’est ailleurs pas du point de vue géologique qu’il
étudia surtout les phénomènes, mais dans leurs rapports avec l’histoire humaine ... Il
prétend trouver dans les civilisations antiques, dans les religions, leurs prophéties et
leurs oracles, leurs idées sur la fin du monde, des preuves à l’appui de son
interprétation symbolique des faits’ (DLF, p. 220). In 1993, a newly discovered
asteroid, 7346 Boulanger, was named in his honour.
The text for this posthumously published work (only one of Boulanger’s works was
published during his lifetime and even in the Encyclopédie he is referred to as ‘feu M.
Boulanger’) is first found in Boulanger’s contribution to the Encyclopédie, (Volume XI,
p. 366-383) where it is given under the title ‘Œconomie Politique’ (Hist. Pol. Rel. anc.
& mod.)’ and begins: ‘c’est l’art & la science de maintenir les hommes en société ...’.
In the present volume, the first separate printing, the text follows a section title
‘Gouvernement’ and begins: ‘Le mot Gouvernement, signifie l’art & la science de
maintenir les hommes en société, & de les y rendre heureux’, &c.
Boulanger’s work was reprinted under the title Essai philosophique sur le gouvernement,
où l’on prouve l’influence de la religion sur la politique, ouvrage posthume de M. B. Londres, 1788,
but that is similarly scarce, known at the Taylorian and Newberry only (ESTC
n48319).
ESTC t65879, at Newberry only. OCLC adds BN, Poitiers and Michigan.
Cioranescu 13424.
Jane Brereton celebrates Isaac Newton in verse
8. BRERETON, Jane (1685-1740).
MERLIN: A POEM. Humbly inscrib’d to Her Majesty. To which is added, the Royal
Hermitage: a Poem. Both by a Lady. printed by Edward Cave, at St John’s Gate.
London: 1735.
FIRST EDITION: LARGE AND FINE PAPER COPY. 4to, (296 x 225mm), engraved
frontispiece and pp. 16, two further engraved plates, in nineteenth century half black morocco over
marbled boards, spine lettered in gilt, spine worn, early shelf label on the front board, with the
bookplate of James Comerford and the later booklabel of James O. Edwards.
£5500
A large and fine paper copy of a scarce and fascinating poem, with no price on the title
and the date in Roman numerals. Ordinary copies have a price of sixpence and the
date in Arabic. The only other reported large-paper copy, at Huntington, has the date
misprinted ‘MDCCXXV’ and the title-page is described by Foxon as a cancel. In this
copy, the date is correctly printed, in Roman numerals, and there is no evidence of
cancellation. This copy is also extra-illustrated with two later engravings of Merlin’s
cave and two contemporary manuscript corrections to the text. The unsigned
engraved frontispiece depicts Merlin in an arcade with three arches, examining an
astrolabe, with four ladies and a young man looking on. This is the first verse title to
have been published by Edward Cave, who was known to Jane Brereton through her
contributions to the Gentleman’s Magazine. Only a few other other poems bear his
name, including Mrs Brereton’s postumous Poems on Several Occasions, 1744, published
by subscription. The present work has his attractive printer’s device on the title-page,
a woodcut of St. John’s Gate, where his bookshop was located.
Jane Brereton, second daughter of Thomas and Ann Hughes of Bryn-Griffith in
Flintshire, received a good education and was early encouraged in her ‘peculiar
Genuis for poetry, which was her chief amusement’. In 1711 she married Thomas
Brereton of Brasenose College, Oxford, a man whose wealth allowed her to pursue a
literary career in London. She published The Fifth Ode of the Fourth Book of Horace,
Imitated, 1716 and An Expostulatory Epistle to Sir Richard Steele upon the Death of Mr.
Addison, 1720. Her husband, however, turned out to have a violent temper (‘his first
Fit of Passion, after their Marriage, was like a Thunder-clap to her’) and the couple
separated. Later settling in Wrexham with her two daughters, Mrs Brereton formed
part of a literary circle of women friends to whom much of her poetry of this period
was addressed: ‘Writing was her darling Entertainment, and was to her a Relaxation
from her Cares’.
‘From 1734 [Mrs Brereton] began to contribute regularly to the newly established
Gentleman’s Magazine under the name of ‘Melissa’, particularly in the humorous verse
debate (1734-6) with other contributors such as ‘Fidelia’ and ‘Fido’. It was only after
his death that she learned that her mock-antagonist ‘Fido’ was a neighbour in
Wrexham to whom she had shown her poems before sending them to the Magazine.
He can be identified as Thomas Beach, a wealthy Wrexham wine-merchant, the author
of a poem called Eugenio (1737) which had been corrected by Jonathan Swift. Beach
at times suffered from ‘a very terrible disorder in his head’ and cut his own throat in
May 1737. After this blow, Edward Cave, publisher of the Gentleman’s Magazine, put
her in touch with ‘a young Lady of eminent Merit and learning, an Ornament to her
Sex ... so learn’d and universally admir’d,’ with whom she corresponded from 1738.
This was Cave’s protégée, the youthful Elizabeth Carter, who mentions Mrs Brereton
in a letter in June 1739.’ (Roger Lonsdale, Eighteenth Century Women Poets, p. 79).
The first, and title, poem in the collection, ‘Merlin’, is actually about Isaac Newton
and Merlin is really only used as a physical and temporal backdrop, to set the scene of
the endless ages from which Newton has now blazed forth:
‘Six Centuries, twice told, are now compleat,
Since Merlin liv’d on this terrestial Seat.
Knowledge appear’d, but dawning to my Sight;
She blaz’d on Newton with Meridian Light ...
The summit gain’d, I sought with naked Eye,
To penetrate, the Wonders of the Sky.
No Telescopic Glass known in that Age,
T’assist the Optics of the curious Sage.
Though lov’d Astronomy oft charm’d my Mind,
I now erroneous, all my Notions find.
I thought bright Sol, around our Globe had run;
Nor knew Earth’s Motion, nor the central Sun.
Unseen by me, Attraction’s mighty Force,
And how fierce Comets, run their stated Course;
Surprizing Scenes! by Heav’n reserv’d in store,
For its own Fav’rite Newton, to explore’ (pp. 6-8).
The last of the poems in the collection, ‘On the Bustoes in the Royal Hermitage’,
celebrates the five busted heads of John Locke, Robert Boyle, William Woolaston,
Samuel Clarke and, once again, Isaac Newton.
Ordinary Paper Copies: ESTC t39253, at BL, Bodleian, Bancroft, Yale, Newberry,
Cincinnati, Texas and Yale.
Cancel Title-page: ESTC n3709, at Huntington only.
Foxon B410.
9. BYRON, Medora Gordon (fl. 1808-1816).
CELIA in search of a Husband. By a Modern Antique. In two volumes. Second
Edition. Vol. I [-II]. printed at the Minerva=Press, for A.K. Newman and Co.
(Successors to Lane, Newman, and Co.) Leadenhall-Street. London: 1809.
SECOND EDITION. Two volumes, 8vo, (196 x 117mm), pp.viii, 322, [2]; [iv], 306, [2], with
the half-titles, in contemporary half red morocco over marbled boards, gilt rules to spine and covers,
spines lettered and numbered in gilt, with the Conyngham bookplate.
£800
An entertaining novel written in response to Hannah More's Coeleb in search of a Wife,
which had become an immediate best-seller on its publication the previous year. The
excessive piety and moralising tone of More’s novel stuck in the throat of more
sophisticated writers such as Jane Austen, who disliked it intensely. In the present
work, the heroine cuts a more modern figure: she is an intelligent, no-nonsense young
lady from the country who comes to stay with her sister in London, only to be thrown
into the middle of the corrupt and cynical marriage market of fashionable society.
Little is known of the identity of this novelist, who published nine novels with the
Minerva Press. She published under two pseudonyms, ‘a Modern Antique’, as here,
and ‘Medora Gordon Byron’ or ‘Miss Byron’, thought to be a combination of Lord
Byron’s names with that of his character Medora, from the Corsair. Cited as her ‘best
work’ (along with The Spinster’s Journal, 1816) by the Feminist Companion to Literature, this
early novel shows her already turning away ‘from upwardly-mobile love stories and
pious pattern characters (condemning fashionable society, boosting domesticity)
towards a sympathetic probing of the melancholy but good-hearted male and the
nervous, self-defensive female solitary’.
'Celia, though displaying moral as well as personal charms of no ordinary
occurrence, is not absolutely out of nature. She acts up to the principles of religion,
without any of the modern cant; with a mind perfectly feminine, she is bold enough to
let reason take the lead; and, in a world of levity, she sets an example which the young
of her sex in the present day would do well to imitate. To ladies and gentleman, this
Modern Antique (as the lady calls herself, if lady it be who is the author,) reads a very
instructive lecture. All the fashionable absurdities of the day are neatly satirized; and
the modern London-fine-world is here drawn with exactness, and exhibited, as it
ought to be, not as an object of envy, but of disgust' (Monthly Review, October 1809).
Garside, Raven & Schöwerling 1809:15; Block p. 31; Blakey p.227.
‘but if Ladies supply the Stage, why not the Library?’
10. C., Mrs.
BELINDA, OR THE FAIR FUGITIVE. A Novel. By Mrs. C.- sold by Francke and
Bispink. Halle, 1789.
FIRST CONTINENTAL EDITION. 8vo, (166 x 98mm), pp. [vi], 228, [1] errata, in
contemporary quarter calf over distinctive brown and grey mottled boards, spine gilt in compartments
with orange morocco label lettered in gilt, red edges, from the library of Baron von Poellnitz, though
not so marked.
£2250
A scarce German printing of a popular but now very scarce novel. This edition retains
the highly entertaining dedication, which is to the Duchess of Marlborough: ‘the
Writer of these Sheets flatters herself that the Reader will find nothing to surpass
probability; and that Simplicity, more than Bombast, has been the Author’s guide ... So
many of these Works have been already produced by the Pens of Ladies, that the
Majority of Critics deem them unworthy their Perusal: but if Ladies supply the Stage,
why not the Library? and a good Novel in my Opinion answers the same Purpose as a
good Play’. These are fine sentiments indeed, but rather let down by her next,
magnificent, comment: ‘Should my Pen ever aim at any Thing higher than a Novel,
there is no Person I would sooner inscribe it to than his Grace your Husband’.
First published in two volumes by G. Allen, ‘at his circulating library’ in St. Martin’s
Lane, in 1789. That first edition (ESTC n15622) is very rare, with ESTC listing
Harvard, New York Society Library and UCLA only and it was followed by a Dublin
edition in the same year, which is even rarer (ESTC t223082, at the British Library
only). A ‘new edition’ then appeared later in the same year, also printed by Allen
(ESTC t33007, at the British Library, New York Society Library, UCLA and Penn).
61. Nicholson
10. C., Mrs
There were, strangely, two German editions, both published in English. The present
one came out in the same year as the original; the second of the continental editions
appeared in Göliz, in 1795 (ESTC t149041, at Göttingen only). There was also a
German translation, Belinda, oder der Schöne Flüchtling, Halle, 1789.
Mrs. C. must have been content with the number of editions of her novel to be
published and it is interesting to speculate whether she knew that it was a rip-roaring
success in Germany. She may have been less than overwhelmed at its reception in the
English press, where it seems to have been indifferently received: ‘This novel is a little
fascinating, for it has kept us nearly an hour from better employment, without novelty
of sentiment, character, or situation’ (Critical Review, September 1789).
Garside, Raven & Schöwerling 1789:36; Block p. 266;
ESTC t211450, at Coburg and Corvey only.
Translated by Louis XIV
11. CAESAR, Gaius Julius (100-44 BC).
LOUIS XIV, King of France (1638-1715).
LA GUERRE DES SUISSES, Traduite du I Livre des Commentaires de Iule Cesar,
par Louis XIV. Dieu-donné Roy de France & de Nauarre. de l’Imprimerie Royale. A
Paris, 1651.
FIRST EDITION. Folio, (380 x 250mm), pp. [ii], 18, [4] four double-page engraved plates,
French royal arms on the title-page, engraved head- and tail-plates and historiated initial ‘T’, in
contemporary mottled calf, neatly rebacked and corners restored, the royal arms gilt on the centre of
both covers, spine gilt in compartments with black morocco label lettered in gilt, nineteenth century
ownership inscriptions on the front end-paper, acid corrosion to the surface of the boards.
£5000
A scarce, lavishly illustrated translation of Caesar, printed at the Imprimerie Royale and
translated by Louis XIV at the age of thirteen. The four double-page engravings are
by Abraham Bosse, Gabrielle Pérelle, Pierre Richer and Nicolas Cochin. There are
also three engraved vignettes and a decorative initial ‘T’, also by Bosse. A note to the
Bibliothèque Nationale exhibition entry for one of the engravings from the present work,
‘Bataille des Suisses contre les armées romaines’, states that only ten copies of this
work were printed. An unlikely figure, but it was certainly privately printed in small
numbers for presentation only. This copy is from the library of the nineteenth century
bibliophile, Montmerqué, and it contains his brief note on the book and its plates,
with the date of his acquisition. This is followed by another inscription by an
unidentified later owner.
‘Henri IV and Louis XIII translated, respectively, the first two Commentaires and the
last two. (An edition containing both translations was published in 1630 ‘au Louvre’,
that is, by the royal publishing house). Louis XIV (who did not exert himself unduly)
retranslated the first Commentary, already translated by Henri IV, and produced a
sumptuous illustrated edition in 1651, when he was still under the tutelage of Mazarin’
(Luciano Canfora, Julius Caesar, p. xii). It is likely that the young prince (he did not
become king until 1654) would also have been helped in the composition by Paul
Hardouin de Péréfixe (1606-1671), Archbishop of Paris, who was his preceptor from
1644.
Brunet says dismissively of this work: ‘Ce livre, orné de 4 pl., n’a guère d’autre mérite
que d’être l’ouvrage sur lequel s’est exercé dans son enfance un grand roi’.
OCLC lists BN, BL, NLS, McGill, Harvard, Princeton, NYPL and a handful of
copies in Germany.
Cioranescu XVII, 43778; Brunet I, 1460.
12. CARTAUD DE LA VILATE, François (c. 1700-1737).
ESSAI HISTORIQUE ET PHILOSOPHIQUE SUR LE GOÛT. Par M. Cartaud de
la Vilate. A Londres. 1751.
12mo, (162 x 90mm), pp. [viii], 327, with the half-title, in contemporary mottled calf, spine gilt in
compartments with sun-burst tooling, yellow morocco label lettered in gilt, a few small surface
abrasions, red edges, marbled endpapers.
£500
An attractive copy of this scarce essay on aesthetics by the philosopher-priest, Cartaud
de la Vilate. In his Pensées critiques sur les mathématiques, 1733, he calls into question the
certainties of mathematics and debates its usefulness. His Essai historique et philosophique
sur le Goût, which first appeared in an Amsterdam edition of 1736, attracted
considerable attention and was several times reprinted, as late as 1970 when Slatkine
reprinted it. Grimm said of it: ‘L’auteur est dans un délire continuel. Son style est vif,
rapide ... marche au hasard’ (DLF, p. 272).
‘L’on peut aisément juger par la façon don [sic] ce livre est écrit, que je l’ai destiné à
ces lecteurs distraits & peu sérieux, qui aiment à voltiger sur divers sujets sans trop les
approfondir. Le mérite d’amuser cette partie du public, m’a paru de quelque
importance. J’ai employé un style propre à ce dessein, où il s’agit de faire éfleurer la
littérature à des gens qui n’ont gueres que de l’imagination, & qui l’ont vive’ (Preface).
The work is divided into two parts: the first, which takes up the larger part of the
work, is ‘Essais historiques & philosophiques sur le Goût’. The second part is widerranging and includes shorter essays, such as ‘Le Goût est-il arbitraire?’, ‘Des
fondemens de l’harmonie’, ‘En quoi consiste le géométrique de l’harmonie’ and
‘L’ignorance est-elle plus avantageuse à la politique des princes, que l’étude des
lettres?’.
ESTC t101745, at BL, Cambridge, Taylorian; Getty, NYPL, Illinois, Toronto and Yale.
OCLC adds Cincinnati.
See Cioranescu 15737.
as subscribed to, mocked and finally burnt by Swift
13. CARTHY, Charles (b. 1703 or 1704).
A TRANSLATION OF THE SECOND BOOK OF HORACE’S EPISTLES,
Together with Some of the most select in the First, with Notes. A Pastoral Courtship,
from Theocritus. One Original Poem in English, and a Latin Ode spoken before the
Government on His Majesty’s Birth-Day, 1730. By Charles Carthy, A.M. printed by
Christopher Dickson, in the Post-Office-Yard, Sycomore-Alley, Dublin: 1731.
FIRST EDITION. 4to, (250 x 185mm), pp. [viii], 116, title-page vignette, decorative initials and
head- and tail-pieces throughout, in contemporary red morocco, a little dulled with some light
scratches, gilt and blind borders to covers, the front cover lettered in the centre ‘I Phelipps Y’, spine gilt
in compartments, black morocco label lettered in gilt, dentelles and edges gilt.
£4600
A handsome copy in an Irish presentation binding of a collection of poems that
became a target of great raillery to Swift and his friends. This is the only edition of
what became an infamous translation of Horace by Charles Carthy, a young Irish
clergyman and schoolmaster who was in his twenties when the book was published.
The four page list of subscribers, which includes not only Swift himself, but several
members of his circle, such as Thomas Sheridan, William Delany, William Dunkin and
Matthew and Laetitia Pilkington, and other prominent figures including Dick Tighe,
Swift’s enemy, and Ambrose Philips, suggests that Carthy was well-connected in
literary circles and received much encouragement for the publication of his
translations. The high expectations of his contemporaries explain in part the
explosion of criticism and mirth which met the publication, when Carthy’s translation
of Horace, which occupies almost the whole volume, turned out to be laboured, dull
and insipid. The printing of the Latin and English versions in parallel text earned
Carthy the nickname Mezentius, after the King of Caere in Etruria, who was famous
for his cruel punishments, one of which was to tie the living to the dead. The joke
continued in Swift’s famous epigram:
‘This I may boast, which few e’er cou’d,
Half of my book at least is good’.
Swift’s young protégé, William Dunkin, published two satirical pamphlets An
Account of a Strange and Wonderful Apparition Lately Seen in Trinity-College, Dublin, Dublin
1734 and Mezentius on the Rack, Dublin 1734, both of which include many epigrams
against Carthy which may well have been written with Swift’s help:
‘Creech murder’d Horace in his senseless rhymes,
But hung himself to expiate his crimes.
What then must Carthy do in proper season,
Who murder’d Horace without rhyme or reason?’
In Laetitia Pilkington’s Memoirs, she describes an occasion when Swift sent for her
early one morning and presented her with a large book, ‘very finely bound in Turkey
leather, and handsomely gilt’, rather like the present Dublin presentation binding,
perhaps. ‘“This”, says he, “is a translation of the Epistles of Horace, a present to me
from the author, ‘tis a special good cover! But I have a mind there be something
valuable within side of it”, so taking out his penknife, he cut out all the leaves close to
the inner margin. “Now”, says he, “I will give these what they greatly want,” and put
them all into the fire. He then brought out two drawers fill’d with letters: “Your task,
Madam, is to paste in all these letters, in this cover, in the order I shall give them to
you; I intended to do it myself, but that I thought it might be a pretty amusement for a
child, so I sent for you”’ (Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington, University of Georgia Press,
1997, edited by A.C. Elias Jr, I, 33).
ESTC t51591, at BL, Cambridge, Dublin, Marsh’s Library, NLI, Rylands, Brotherton;
Cornell, Free Library of Philadelphia, Huntingdon, McMaster, Newberry, Illinois,
Kansas and Victoria.
Foxon p. 109.
Cicero spun to the utmost - an attempt to improve Denham
14. CATHERALL, Samuel (1661?-1723?).
CATO MAJOR. A Poem. Upon the Model of Tully’s Essay of Old Age. In Four
Books. By Samuel Catherall, M.A. Fellow of Oriel College, in Oxford, and Prebendary
of Wells. printed for J. Roberts, at the Oxford-Arms in Warwick-Lane. London: 1725.
FIRST EDITION. 8vo, (193 x 119mm), pp. xvi, 88, with an engraved frontispiece included in the
pagination (as in Foxon), the first and last few leaves a little dusty, in contemporary gilt and blind
ruled calf, spine ruled, considerably worn and with the joints split but holding on the cords, head and
tail-cap missing, the surface of the boards worn, extremities bumped, with the ownership inscription of
‘Jno. Aspinall’ on the title page, an early catalogue annotation on the front free endpaper and the
recent booklabel of Jim Edwards.
£750
A scarce versification of one of Cicero’s most famous essays, printed by Samuel
Richardson. The author, a fellow of Oriel College and a canon of Wells Cathedral,
explains in his preface that he was inspired by Denham’s earlier translation of the same
text: ‘About three years ago, lighting on Sir John Denham’s translation of that
celebrated piece (Tully’s book De Senectute) and, not without some wonder and pity,
seeing that great genius fall so much below the spirit of the Roman orator, in his
English metre; I was so vain, as to think a kind of paraphrase of the same essay, would
succeed easier and better: and therefore, at my leisure hours, when severer studies
became tedious, I undertook to build a poem (if it is worthy to be call’d so) on Tully’s
most exquisite model; taking special care to follow his exalted sentiments, as closely as
I could, and not presuming to add much of my own, unless where I am fond of
spinning out a Ciceronian thought to the utmost’.
ESTC t128149; Foxon C72.
15. [CATHOLIC CHURCH.]
ORDRE DES CÉRÉMONIES qui doivent être observées pour la bénédiction d’une
cloche, en l’église de S. Jacques de la Boucherie de Paris ... Le Mercredi 5 Juillet 1780, a
trois heures après midi. A Paris, de l’Imprimerie de Benoit Morin, ImprimeurLibraire, rue Saint-Jacques, à la Vérité. 1780.
FIRST EDITION. 12mo, (166 x 94mm), pp. [iv], [5]-35, the main part of the text printed in
Latin and French in parallel text, in contemporary mottled calf, spine simply gilt in compartments,
lettered in gilt, with marbled endpapers and speckled edges.
£950
A very scarce work in an attractive slim binding giving details for the ceremony of the
blessing of the church bell at St. Jacques de la Boucherie in Paris. The bell had been
named ‘Marie-Thérèse’ by the queen of France, Marie-Thérèse of Austria, on its initial
installation in 1680 and it was recast and rechristened with the same name in 1780.
The text is preceded by a ten page advertisement which states that this ceremony, one
of the rarer forms of ceremonial blessings used by the church, has been printed
especially in order to encourage the faithful to follow and understand the prayers used.
The order of the ceremony was in Latin but a French translation is given next to the
text. At the start of the text, instructions are given as to what hours, and for what
duration, the bells will be rung, where the clock to be blessed will be positioned and
what vestments the priest will wear.
‘On a cru qu’il étoit indispensable de fair imprimer les Cérémonies & les Prieres que
l’Eglise emploie dans la Bénédiction des Clothes, pour faire connoitre aux Fideles
l’esprit de celle Cérémonie & ce ces Prieres, & les mettre en l’état d’y prendre part. On
les exhorte à les lire attentivement, pour se disposer à y assister avec recueillement &
avec foi’ (p. 5).
OCLC lists three copies in Paris and UC Berkeley only.
16. CAYLUS, Anne-Claude-Philippe de Tubières de Grimoard de Pestels de
Vévy, comte de (1692-1765).
LES ETRENNES DE LA SAINT-JEAN. Troisième Edition, Revûe, corrigée &
augmentée par les Auteurs de plusieurs Morceaux d’esprit qui n’ont point encore paru.
A Troyes, chez la Veuve Oudot. 1751 (altered in manuscript to 1752).
[with:] LES ECOSSEUSES, ou les Oeufs de Pasques; Suivi de l’histoire du Porteur
d’Eau, ou les Amours de la Ravaudeuse, Comédie. Seconde Partie des Etrennes de la
Saint-Jean. Seconde Edition, revûe & augmentée. A Troyes, Chez la Veuve Oudot;
Et se trouvent à Paris, Chez Duchesne, Libraire, rue Saint Jacques au Temple du
Goût. [1742].
‘Third Edition; Second Edition, ‘revue & augmentée’. 12mo, (150 x 85mm), pp. xvi, 197, neat
and probably contemporary alteration of the date on the title page to 1752 (MDCCLII, viz., one ‘I’
added) in dark brown ink in a contemporary hand; with the woodcut portrait of the printer,
‘Monsieur ou Madame Oudot’, title page and woodcut page printed in green and black; pp. 166, [4],
including woodcut frontispiece printed in brown, title page printed in brown and black with woodcut
peapod vignette, in contemporary red morocco, triple fillet border to covers, flat spine simply gilt in
compartments, yellow morocco label lettered in gilt, pink and gilt embossed endpapers, gilt edges, with
the bookplate of Henry B. H. Beaufoy.
£1600
A very handsome copy in contemporary red morocco, possibly by Derome jeune, of
two of Caylus’ most celebrated œuvres badines. These humorous works contain a variety
of anecdotes, short stories, little fictional vignettes, imaginary correspondence, short
plays, poems and dialogues, with settings which take the reader from the fashionable
east to the more disreputable parts of Paris. With the famous coloured frontispiece to
Les Etrennes de la Saint-Jean, illustrating the printer, ‘Monsieur ou Madame Oudot’, here
printed in green. Also containing ‘Lettre Persanne d’un Monsieur de Paris, à un
Gentilhomme Turc de ses Amis’ and the reply ‘Reponse pour le Gentilhomme Turc, à
la Lettre Persanne de Paris’ (pp. 14-21); ‘Dialogue en forme de Questions, sur le
Mariage’ (pp. 24-29), ‘Le Ballet des Dindons’ (pp. 53-56), ‘Le Prince Bel-Esprit, & la
Reine Toute-Belle’ (pp. 61-65) and the conte philosophique ‘Les Epreuves d’Amour
dans les quatre Elémens, histoire nouvelle’ (pp. 67-110).
Les Ecosseuses, ou les Oeufs de Pasques, intended as a sequel to Les Etrennes de la SaintJean but not usually found with it, has the frontispiece and part of the title printed in
brown. This selection begins with the short story, ‘Le Oui & le Non, mal placés’ (pp.
13-36) and includes a number of short stories with or without dialogue, such as the
‘Histoire Veritable d’un beau Bal dansé après soupé, dans un Fauxbourg de Paris (pp.
69-74). It also includes the short comedy, ‘Le Porteur d’Iau, ou les Amours de la
Ravaudeuse’ (pp. 75-142).
Both works were written in collaboration with a number of Caylus’ friends,
including the redoubtable Comtesse de Verrue, Crébillon fils, Duclos, Vadé,
Maurepas, Moncrif, Collé and Voisenon. These were the key players in a literary
'société badine' which centred around the actress and comedian Jeanne-Françoise
Quinault. The society would meet for exuberant dinners during the course of which
they would collectively compose these tales and jeux d'esprit.
Provenance: with the bookplate of Henry B. H. Beaufoy, whose library was sold at
Christie’s in 1909 (see De Ricci, English Collectors of Books and Manuscripts, p. 181).
Cioranescu 16247; 16251 (Troyes 1739); Cohen-de Ricci 209; Gay I 182; Jones p. 79
and p. 69.
OCLC: Les Etrennes de la Saint-Jean: University of Connecticut, DLC, Maryland,
Princeton, Pennsylvania State, Vanderbilt and Göttingen.
Les Ecosseuses: Ohio State only.
17. [CHARACTERS.]
CHARACTERS OF THE PRESENT MOST CELEBRATED COURTEZANS.
Interpreted with a Variety of Secret Anecdotes Never before published. printed for M.
James, Pater-noster Row. London: 1780.
FIRST EDITION. Small 8vo, (148 x 85mm), pp. 212, M1 with a small closed internal tear,
touching the text but with no loss, in contemporary French coloured mottled calf, triple gilt filet to
covers, spine gilt, black morocco label lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers, gilt edges.
£6000
Scarce first and only edition of this intimate and rather hostile account of ‘the present
most celebrated Courtezans’, being a varied selection of actresses, prostitutes and
minor aristocrats. In total thirteen ladies are described, each in considerable detail,
with their characters and physical appearance (in many cases an appearance much
altered by time), their amorous adventures and misfortunes and their dates and places
of birth. The names of the ladies and their lovers or protectors are only very thinly
disguised by the omission of a few letters and the substitution of the odd dash. Clearly
the author intended his codes to be broken and the identities of all his characters, male
and female, to be readily accessible.
In the preface, the anonymous author launches a thinly veiled attack on ‘the erudite
and philosophical Mr. Harris ... the only writer I have ever encountered on this no less
interesting than extensive subject’. Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies: or, man of
pleasure’s kalender ... Containing the histories and some curious anecdotes of the most celebrated
ladies now on the town, or in keeping, and also many of their keepers, was a notoriously salacious
account of the whores of Covent Garden which appeared in several different forms in
the 1770s and 1780s. In our author’s opinion, Harris’ lists are entirely fictitious,
‘where the characters are, to an individual, imaginary, and the whole of which is totally
founded on fiction’ (Preface, p. 11).
‘The following pages’, he concludes, ‘must depend on diametrically opposite
principles for their success; the simplicity of its prose, and the unadorned authenticity
of its anecdotes. And as the flowery and diffusive language of Harris is well adapted
to the embellishment of fiction, so does a plain and familiar style best suit the abilities
of this author, and become the incontrovertible veracity of this narration’ (Preface, p.
12).
A plain and familiar style the author undoubtedly has and the reader can be left in
no doubt as to his contempt for some of his subjects. Indeed, the viciousness of his
descriptions of the physical defects of some of the ladies as they age suggests a spiteful
delight and misogyny that may suggest some sort of revenge motive for parts of this
publication. For example, he writes of ‘Mrs. B-DD-Y ... now in the third year of a
connection with Mr. W-bst-r of Drury Lane ... Her eye-sight is decayed, her memory
extinct, and her whole frame relaxed to a degree of almost infantine imbecillity [sic], by
a dreadful and excessive indulgence in love, liquour, lust, and laudanum’ (pp. 41-42).
Or of ‘Mrs F--r-r ... she was then in all the bloom of eighteen, and had a face as
beautiful as can be imagined; her figure could never be called a fine one, but it
certainly deserved the epithet pretty; it was at that time utterly unencumbered with all
that enormous mountain of fat, which it has since so unhappily collected’ (pp. 62-63).
Or again, of Lady Gr-s-ner, the Royal mistress: ‘The person of Lady Gr-s-ner has been
rather a fine one but it is considerably impaired by abuses and debaucheries. Her face,
which never was very handsome, is now much less so than formerly, as a constant
application of corrosive paints and cosmetics have so contracted and excoriated the
skin, that unless it be newly enamelled, it is impossible to look at it without nausea and
disgust’ (p. 194).
ESTC t67809, at BL, NLS (defective: lacks pp. 205-212), UCLA, Yale and State
Library of New South Wales.
Garside, Raven & Schöwerling 1780:2.
18. CHAUDON, Louis Mayeul (1737-1817).
DICTIONNAIRE ANTI-PHILOSOPHIQUE, pour servir de Commentaire & de
Correctif au Dictionnaire Philosophique, & aux autres Livres, qui ont paru de nos
jours contre le Christianisme: Ouvrage dans lequel on donne en abrégé les preuves de
la Religion, & la Réponse aux objections de ses Adversaires; avec la notice des
principaux Auteurs qui l’ont attaquée, & l’apologie des Grands Hommes qui l’ont
défendue. chez la Veuve Girard & François Seguin, Imprimeur-Libraires, à la Place
Saint Didier. A Avignon, 1767.
FIRST EDITION. 8vo, (190 x 110mm), pp. xx, 451, some marginal dampstaining in the final
part of the book, last gathering sprung, otherwise a good copy in contemporary mottled calf, spine gilt
in compartments, marbled endpapers, red edges, with the bookplates of M. l’Abbé Mathieu and
Lucien Choudin.
£950
A popular attack on Voltaire’s Dictionnaire philosophique written in the same alphabetical
format and using Voltaire’s own methods against him. ‘On a mis l’erreur en
Dictionnaire, il est nécessaire d’y mettre la vérité. Les Apôtres de l’impiété prennent
toutes sortes de formes pour répandre leur poison; les Défenseurs de la Religion ne
chercheront-ils pas aussi les moyens de faire goûter leurs remedes? L’ordre
alphabétique est le goût du jour, & il faut bien s’y plier si l’on veut avoir des Lecteurs’
(Préface, p. v). Voltaire was infuriated by this work which he condemned as a
‘rhapsodie antiphilosophique’; in subsequent editions of the Dictionnaire philosophique he
condemned Chaudon’s fanaticism and criticised his biblical interpretations.
The text is comprised of philosophical and theological articles and definitions,
presented alphabetically. There are 128 articles in the main body of the text ranging
from 'Athée', ‘Guerre’, ‘Philosophe’ and 'Tout est bien' to 'Raison', ‘Vertu’ and
'Tolérance'. A number of the articles are on individual writers, most particularly
Voltaire but also including Toland, ‘Did**’ (the writer cannot even bring himself to
write the full name of this ‘cruel ennemi de la Religion’), La Beaumelle, La Mettrie and
Rousseau. A final section, ‘Supplément au Dictionnaire Anti-Philosophique, ou Pieces
originales concernant les Philosophes’ (pp. 373-445), includes a number of official
condemnations of some of the works discussed, including the Arrest du Parlement of
1762 condemning Rousseau’s Emile; that condemning the Dictionnaire philosophique is
reproduced in the preface.
Cioranescu 18828; see also Inventaire Voltaire p. 244.
‘one of the original writers on the sport’
19. CHETHAM, James (1640-1692).
THE ANGLER’S VADE MECUM: Or, a Compendious, yet full, discourse of
Angling: Discovering the aptest Methods and Ways, exactest Rules, properest Baits,
and choicest Experiments for the catching all manner of fresh Water Fish. Together
with a brief Discourse of Fish-ponds, and not only the easiest, but most Palatable ways
of dressing of all sorts of Fish, Whether belonging to Rivers, or Ponds; and the Laws
concerning Angling, and the Preservation of such Fish. The Third Edition, Illustrated
with Sculptures: and very much Enlarged. printed for William Battersby, ans are to be
Sold at his Shop at Thavies Inn Gate, near St. Andrews Church in Holbourn; and
William Brown in Black Horse Alley. London: 1700.
Third Edition, ‘Very Much Enlarged’; issue (a) with phrase ‘illustrated with sculptures’.
8vo, (157 x 94mm), pp. [viii], 326, [10], with the two engraved plates, bound facing each other after
the preface, tears through text on B3 and B7, with no loss but rather fragile, the chapter on ponds
(Chapter 38, pp. 243-251) marked up by an early owner, in contemporary panelled calf, plain spine,
foot of spine chipped, sprinkled edges, with the later booklabel of Commander E.R. Lewes. £1200
An attractive copy in an elegant, contemporary binding, of this important early fishing
manual. First published anonymously in 1681, Chetham’s detailed account of the art
of fly-fishing reveals a wealth of personal experience and skill and is written in a clear,
concise and frequently witty manner. Chetham’s study covers all aspects of the sport,
including observations on the most commonly encountered fish, the different lines to
be used, descriptions of the dub-flies to be used each month and instructions on
protecting the fish and their habitats. Chetham also includes instructions for the
dressing of different types of fish as well as numerous recipes for the baking, roasting,
frying, broiling and stewing of the catch, together with instructions for such delights as
‘eel pye’ and the recipe for ‘an excellent French bread to eat fish with’.
‘Chetham’s prefaces are in Diogenes’ vein, curt and caustic; he escapes from the
category of manual makers, and takes rank as one of the original writers on the sport.
He is indebted, indeed, to his forerunners, but acknowledges it; he improves on their
systems, and calls attention to the fact. He is never servile, nor plagiaristic, always
honest, sometimes a little surly’ (Westwood & Satchell p. 60).
One of two editions of 1700, this is a paginary reprint of the second edition of 1689.
This issue has the phrase ‘illustrated with sculptures’ on the title-page and has the two
engraved plates, each with six fishes and carrying the imprint ‘Printed for William
Battersby at Thavies Inn Gate near St. Andrews Church in Holborn’. Seven of the
fourteen errors listed in the errata of the second edition have been corrected. Copies
of this work are seldom found in such good condition but are frequently rebacked or
rebound and wanting one or both of the plates. Other than a couple of small tears,
this is an excellent copy internally and externally.
Wing C3791; Westwood and Satchell, Bibliotheca Piscatoria, pp. 59-60.
20. CHUDLEIGH, Mary Lee, Lady (1656-1712).
POEMS ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS. Together with the Song of the Three
Children Paraphras’d. By the Lady Chudleigh. London, printed by W. B. for Bernard
Lintott at the Middle Temple Gate in Fleetstreet. 1703.
FIRST EDITION. 8vo, (194 x 120mm), pp. [xvi], 125, [1], [16], 73, in contemporary black
morocco, covers panelled in gilt, with fleurons at the corners and grouped leafy ornaments in the centre
of each of the sides, spine gilt in compartments, lettered in gilt, spine faded and a little rubbed, head
and foot slightly chipped, extremities and edges a little worn, gilt edges, with the booklabel of J.O.
Edwards.
£4000
A handsome copy of an important collection of poems by Mary Chudleigh, friend of
Elizabeth Thomas and admirer of Mary Astell, whose defence of the female sex she
tried to emulate. Dedicated to Queen Anne, her Poems on Several Occasions was widely
noticed and several times reprinted. The poems include a wide range of subjects, from
lyrics and satires of the age of Dryden, to philosophical and more contemplative verse
in keeping with the solitary and often melancholy life that she led in Devon. Her
marriage to Sir George Chudleigh was not a happy one and she sought consolation in
writing poetry and in her female friendships. ‘The following Poems were written at
several Times, and on several Sujects: If the Ladies, for whom they are chiefly
design’d, and to whose Service they are intirely devoted, happen to meet with any
thing in them that is entertaining, I have all I am at’ (Preface, p. vii).
‘Mary Chudleigh was apparently part of a small circle of respectable literary-minded
women ... Her poetry, which often uses the uneven pindaric stanza form made popular
by Cowley, is assured, lively, and polished, with occasional lapses into sentimental
piety; as she claims, it gives “a Picture of my Mind, my Sentiments all laid open to
their View; they’ll sometimes see me cheerful, pleas’d, sedate and quiet; at other times
griev’d, complaining, struggling with my Passions, blaming my self, endeavouring to
pay a Homage to my Reason”’ (Ruth Perry in A Dictionary of British and American Women
Writers, p. 84).
In 1699, Mary Chudleigh had been hugely angered by a sermon preached at a
wedding in Sherborne by a non-conformist minister, Mr. Sprint, who advocated the
total subordination of women to their husbands. In response, she published The
Ladies Defence, 1701, a verse-debate in which the female heroine, Melissa, argues
vigorously about the importance of female education and the role of women with
three different prejudiced men.
Perhaps the most important poem in this collection is ‘To the Ladies’ (p. 40), a
poem inspired by Mary Astell’s Some Reflections Upon Marriage, 1700, in which Chudleigh
starkly describes the oppression of the married woman:
‘Wife and Servant are the same,
But only differ in the Name:
For when that fatal Knot is ty’d,
Which nothing, nothing can divide:
When she the word obey has said,
And Man by Law supreme has made,
Then all that’s kind is laid aside,
And nothing left but State and Pride:
Fierce as an Eastern Prince he grows,
And all his innate Rigor shows ...
Him still must serve, him still obey,
And nothing act, and nothing say,
But what her haughty Lord thinks fit,
Who with the Pow’r, has all the Wit.
Then shun, oh! shun that wretched State,
And all the fawning Flatt’rers hate:
Value your selves, and Men despise,
You must be proud, if you’ll be wise’.
Provenance: there is no internal evidence to this, but this copy was formerly in the
library of John Brett-Smith and was almost certainly inherited from his father, H.F.B.
Brett-Smith, an Oxford don and a keen book collector in his own right.
Foxon p. 121; ESTC t97275.
‘forming the finished politician ... on the ruins of divine principles’
21. CRAWFORD, William (1739?-1800).
REMARKS ON THE LATE EARL OF CHESTERFIELD’S LETTERS TO HIS
SON. By William Crawford, M.A. London: printed for T. Cadel, in the Strand, and
John Sewell, in Cornhill. 1776.
FIRST EDITION. 12mo, (176 x 100mm), pp. xi, [2], 4-134, 123-146, notes in a contemporary
hand on p. 77, in early nineteenth century polished calf, spine with raised bands, blind decoration in
the compartments, brown morocco label lettered in gilt, with the heraldic bookplate of Johannes G.
Home Drummond de Abbots Grange.
£1000
A forthright attack on Chesterfield’s Letters to his Son, presented in the form of dialogues
between Constantius and Eugenius, the preceptor and his pupil. Crawford, an Irish presbyterian
minister and patriot, explains in the preface that his initial response to the first volume
of Chesterfield’s Letters had been one of delight: ‘The graceful ease, and beautiful
elegance of his style, the propriety of his instructions, and the persuasive manner in
which he conveys them, had afforded him a very high degree of pleasure’ (p. iv).
However, before he had finished the last volume he had entirely revised his opinion,
seeing all Chesterfield’s knowledge, wit and excellence of style ‘prostituted to an
unworthy purpose’ and the work full of corrupt principles.
‘He discovered, to his great disappointment, that, his LORDSHIP, whilst he
laboured with anxious solicitude to qualify his son, for making a figure in the world as
a statesman and a courtier, and to embellish him with all the politer and more graceful
accomplishments, exerted the utmost power
of an artful insinuating address, to make him
a libertine on principle, to corrupt his morals,
and render him insensible to the exalted
obligations of religion and virtue. A just
detestation of an attempt so inglorious, so
unnatural, so inconsistent with the duties of a
parent, a christian, and a member of society,
produced these dialogues’ (pp. iv-v).
ESTC t115523, at BL, CUL, Glasgow;
Harvard, Texas and Yale.
Gulick 166.
22. DAVIES, Thomas (c. 1712-1785).
DRAMATIC MISCELLANIES: consisting of critical observations on several plays of
Shakespeare:with a review of his principal characters, and those of various eminent
writers, as represented by Mr. Garrick, and other celebrated comedians. With
anecdotes of dramatic poets, actors, &c. By Thomas Davies, author of Memoirs of
the life of David Garrick, Esq. In three volumes. A New Edition. Vol. I [-III].
printed for the Author, and sold at his Shop, in Great Russell-Street, Covent-Garden.
London: 1785.
New Edition. Three volumes, 8vo, (180 x 108mm), engraved portrait frontispiece and pp. [iii]-xi,
[i], 451; [3]-427; [ii], 605, in contemporary tree calf, small scuff to the lower cover of Vol. III,
otherwise just the smallest imperfections, spines brightly gilt with green and red morocco labels
numbered and lettered in gilt, with eagle, snake and urn crests gilt in the upper and lower
compartments, with the Fasque bookplate.
£1200
A stunning copy from the Gladstone Library with the Fasque bookplate, this is one of
the freshest and brightest eighteenth century bindings that I have handled.
Thomas Davies was a Scottish actor who gave up his stage career after being
ridiculed by Churchill in The Rosciad. He came to London and opened a bookshop in
Covent Garden where, famously, he introduced his ‘great and good friend’, Dr.
Johnson, to the young Boswell. Davies’ Life of Garrick saw much success and brought
him both income and repututation. The present work, first published in 1783-84, was
also well received at the time. The three volumes contain detailed observation of many
of Shakespeare’s plays with remarks on some actors and performances seen by the
author. Other authors such as Ben Jonson, Dryden and Congreve are also discussed
as are numerous actors: Betterton in particular has a whole chapter devoted to him.
ESTC t136456; Jaggard p. 73.
Madame de Pompadour’s Moll Flanders
23. DEFOE, Daniel (1661?-1731).
MÉMOIRES ET AVANTURES DE MADLLE MOLL FLANDERS, ecrits par ellememe. Traduit [sic] de l’Anglois. A Londres, chez Nourse, Libraire dans le Strand.
1761.
FIRST EDITION IN FRENCH. 8vo, (158 x 90mm), pp. [iv], 232, title within ornamental
border, with the half-title, scattered foxing and dust-staining, in contemporary mottled calf, triple gilt
filet, with the arms of Madame de Pompadour on the boards, manuscript name, or shelf mark, on
front cover, repeated on the front free endpaper; small inscription crossed out on the title-page,
bookplate or booklabel removed from front pastedown, marbled endpapers, red edges.
£12,000
Madame du Pompadour’s copy of the scarce first French edition of Defoe’s
masterpiece, Moll Flanders: the king’s mistress’ copy of England’s first female ‘how to
get on by seduction’ novel. This translation is fascinating for the way in which the text
was adapted for a French audience.
The anonymous translator has considerably altered the text. It includes the whole of
Defoe’s original story, right up to Moll’s transportation, discovery of her son in
America and final return to England but the omissions and rearrangements are very
telling. As well as whole chunks of text that are left out, little French additions adorn
the text, for example, in telling of her marriage night with her first husband (the
brother of her first lover), the English text reads ‘his elder brother took care to make
him very much fuddled before he went to bed ... my husband was so fuddled when he
came to bed’. By contrast, the French, elaborated version, supplies (and one would
expect no less of the French) the type of wine drunk: ‘Pour lui ôter la connoissance de
ce mystère, nous lui fîmes avaler au souper maintes & maintes razades (more and
more glasses) de vin de champagne’ (p. 28).
The ending of the novel is also altered, with Moll’s return to England filled out with
extra detail. Defoe deals with her final return in half a paragraph: ‘We are now grown
old; I am come back to England, being almost seventy years of age, my husband sixtyeight ... and he is come over to England also’. The French translator is not happy with
this level of simplicity and, firstly having Moll travel with her husband, specifies that
they travel in July, in a boat owned by her son, and after a swift and agreeable journey
arrive in the Thames and start looking for a comfortable house on the outskirts of
London. After making various excursions, they chose a house in Hampstead where
they settle down to a happy old age spent, as in the English version, repenting their
wicked lives. Moreover, the French translator gives Moll the added consolation of the
anticipated arrival of her son. The final words in Defoe’s original focus on
repentance: ‘we resolve to spend the remainder of our years in sincere penitence for
the wicked lives we have lived’ but the French version ends on a note of promised
happiness: ‘Je n’attends que l’arrivée de mon cher fils pour mettre le comble à mon
bonheur, & fermer ensuite ma paupiere, dès que le nombre de mes jours sera compté’
(pp. 231-232).
That it took so many years for Moll Flanders to appear in French is surprising,
particularly given the publishing storm that Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe made in France.
The first translation, by Hyacinthe Cordonnier dit Thémiseul de Saint-Hyacinthe and
Juste van Effen, appeared in two volumes in 1720, with the third volume following in
1721 and a second edition following almost before the ink was dry on the first.
Dozens of editions followed and other translations and imitations flooded the market.
In Germany, where Robinson Crusoe had had a similar effect, Moll Flanders followed
swiftly in a German translation by Johann Mattheson, Moll Flanders: das ist: einer, also
genannten, Engländerinn Erstaunens-wehrte Glücks- und Unglücksfälle, die sie, in 60 Jahren,
erlebet und . selber beschrieben hat, Hamburg 1723.
This copy is listed in Madame de Pompadour’s library catalogue in the section,
‘Romans historiques pour l’Angleterre’. This is one of twenty-five English novels in
French translation that she had in her library, published between 1695 and 1763. She
also had Tom Jones, of course, Joseph Andrews, Roderick Random (’by Fielding’) and
Amelia. She also had La Vie & les Aventures de Joseph Thompson, by Kimber, translated by
Puisieux, L’Orpheline Angloise by Sarah Fielding and Le Solitaire Anglois, ou Aventures
merveilleuses de Philippe Quarll, by Dorrington.
Provenance: Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour (1721 – 1764).
Catalogue des Livres de la Bibliothèque de feue Madame la Marquise de Pompadour, Dame du
Palais de la Reine, Paris 1765, p. 219, no. 1848.
ESTC t137277, at BL, Bodleian, Corvey, Boston Public, Clark and Yale; OCLC adds
Herzog August Bibliothek.
MMF 61.7; Gay III, 165; not in Moore.
in contemporary red morocco
24. DES ROCHES, Jean (1740-1787).
LETTRE DU SECRETAIRE DE L’ACADEMIE Impériale & Royale des Sciences
& Belles Lettres de Bruxelles, à M. l’Abbé de Bye, l’Ancien des Bollandistes, au sujet
de la Réponse faite par ce dernier ou Mémoire sur le Testament de St. Remi. A
Bruxelles, chez J. L. De Bouvers, Imprimeur-Libraire, rue d’Assaut. 1780.
FIRST EDITION. 8vo, (196 x 117mm), pp. 47, [1], in contemporary red morocco, triple gilt filet
on covers, spine gilt in compartments, black morocco label lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers, gilt
edges, with the Schloss Eferding stamp and manuscript shelf mark on the front free endpaper. £850
A scarce pamphlet written as part of the controversy which followed the publication
of Des Roches’ work on the life of Saint Remigius, Bishop of Rheims (ca. 437-533).
In this letter, Des Roches defends himself against the accusations of the Abbé de Bye
who attacked Des Roches for undermining the scholarship of the Bollandists, notably
that of Constantin Suyskens. The Bollandists were a society of hagiographers, mainly
Jesuits, who were founded in the seventeenth century by Jean Bolland (1596-1665), the
result of whose scholarship was assembled in the massive undertaking, the Acta
Sanctorum, published over several centuries. The present controversy took place after
the suppression of the Jesuits in 1773, when the Bollandists moved to Brussels where
they remained until 1788.
Jean Des Roches wrote a number of works on the history of the Netherlands and
Flanders. He also published an interesting work called Nouvelles Recherches sur l’Origine
de l’Imprimerie, dans lesquelles on fait voir que la premiere idee en est due aux Brabacons, Brussels,
1777, where he suggests a new theory for the invention of printing, citing a manuscript
verse chronicle written in Flemish between 1312 and 1350.
OCLC lists the BN, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Emory and Wisconsin.
‘précieux exemplaire de l’auteur’
25.
DESCHAMPS DE CHAMPLOISEAU, Etienne-François (sometimes
called Claude-François), Abbé (1745-1791).
LETTRE À M. DE S*** [SAILLY] CAPITAINE DE CAVALERIE, sur l’Institution
des Sourds & Muets. Par M. l’Abbé Deschamps, Chapelain de l’Eglise d’Orléans. chez
Jean Valade, Libraire, rue Saint Jacques. A Londres. Et se trouve à Paris, 1777.
FIRST EDITION. 12mo, (157 x 87mm), pp. 58, in a very pretty slim binding, mottled calf, triple
gilt filet with elaborate tooling on the covers, spine simply gilt in compartments with green morocco
label lettered in gilt, red edges, marbled endpapers, with the author’s inscription partially visible
between two sheets.
£1800
The only edition, very scarce, of this discussion of the education of deaf and dumb
children. Born in Orléans in 1745, Deschamps de Champloiseau was for a time
chaplain of the Eglise Ste-Croix d’Orléans before leaving the priesthood after
encountering difficulties with the Jesuits. A chance encounter with a deaf and dumb
person who had been taught to speak by Péreire decided him on his life’s vocation.
He established a school for the deaf and dumb in his home town of Orléans, opening
it both to paying pupils and to poor children.
After experimenting with the theories of the abbé de l’Epée and d’Amman, he
adopted those of Péreire, a decision for which he was much criticised. This is
Deschamps’ first published work, followed by the more contentious Cours élémentaire
d’éducation des sourds et muets, Paris 1779 and De la Manière de suppléer aux oreilles par les
yeux, Paris 1783. He also translated works by Johann Conrad Amman and Francis
Bacon. The work is prefaced by a short ‘Avis’, taking the form of an advertisement
for the new school: ‘M. l’Abbé Deschamps offre ses services au Public pour
l’institution des Sourds & Muets. Il donne ses Leçons gratuites aux Pauvres de l’un &
l’autre sexe: il se chargera volontiers de prendre en pension les jeunes Gens qu’on
voudra bien lui confier. Outre les connoissances directes au but qu’il se propose, qui
est de faire parler les Sourds & Muets, il en ajoutera d’autres, à la volonté des Parents,
comme la Langue Latine, la Philosophie, l’Histoire ... Sa demeure est à Orléans, rue de
Gourville,
près la Croix-Rouge: il recevra toutes les lettres qu’on lui addressera
franches de port’ (pp. 3-4).
Provenance: the authorial inscription on the initial blank reads ‘Stephani Francisci
Deschamps capellani 1777’ but it is only readable with the help of a light source, as the
leaf it is written on has been pasted to the previous blank leaf.
ESTC t148859, listing Amsterdam University and Göttingen only. OCLC adds BN.
26. [DEVOTIONAL MANUSCRIPT.]
LIVRE D’ PRIÉRE dans la Dévotion du Matin de la saint Messe, Confession, et
Communion, du St: Sacrement, de la Ste Trinité, du Ste Nom de Jésus, et de la
Passion. De la Saint Vierge, aux Saints, et pour les ames du Purgatoire. [circa 1750.]
Manuscript in ink. 4to, (187 x
132mm), pp. [153], [1], neatly
written manuscipt in a contemporary
hand, text within ruled border, titlepage within decorative border, eight
further decorative section titles,
illustrated in ink in different patters,
head and tail-pieces and decorative
initials throughout the text, in
contemporary calf, gilt, slightly rubbed
and worn at extremities, upper joints
cracking and head-cap chipped, brightly
patterned endpapers. £1250 (+ vat)
A
beautiful
devotional
manuscript, divided into the
following sections by decorated
divisional titles: ‘Dévotion du
Saint Sacrifice de la Messe’,
‘Dévotion de la Confession’,
‘Communion’, ‘Dévotion de la
Très=saint Trinité’, ‘Dévotion de
la
Passion
du
Sauveur’,
‘Dévotion à la sainte Vierge
Marie’, ‘Dévotion aux Saints’ and
‘Dévotion pour les Ames du
Purgatoire’.
a lady’s work all round: owned byt the king’s mistress
27. DU PERRON DE CASTERA, Louis Adrien, M. l’Abbé (1705-1752).
LA PIERRE PHILOSOPHALE DES DAMES, ou les Caprices de l’Amour et du
Destin. Nouvelle Historique. Par M. l’Abbé de Castera. Ornée de Figures en Tailledouce. Première [-Seconde] Partie. chez Jean Pepingue, Quay des Grands Augustins,
au saint Esprit. A Paris, 1723.
FIRST EDITION. Two parts in one volume, 12mo, (152 x 78mm), pagination continuous, pp.
[xxiv], 97, [1]; [2], [97]-239, with an engraved frontispiece to the first part and four further
unsigned plates, two plates quite closely bound, one plate cropped on the outer edge, in contemporary
mottled calf with some careful restoration to the joints, from the library of the Comtesse de Verrue
with her arms gilt on both covers, spines gilt with armorial tooling, ‘Meudon’ gilt on the covers above
the arms, marbled endpapers with later bookplate partially removed, mottled edges, with three stamps
on the title-page of the Bibliothèque des Invalides, partly obscuring the imprint, manuscript shelf mark
and brief notes on front free endpaper.
£3000
The scarce first edition of Du Perron’s second work, dedicated to one great female
bibliophile, ‘Protectrice des Arts & des belles Lettres’, the Duchesse du Maine (16761753) and from the library of another, the Comtesse de Verrue (1670-1736). One of
the great book-collectors of the century, the Comtesse de Verrue, ‘dame de volupté’,
was famously the mistress of the King of Piedmont.
A romantic adventure novel set mainly in the Holy Land but opening in rural
England during the protectorate of Oliver Comwell. A Scottish ‘Milord’, with the
magnificent if unlikely name of Courvestein Milfeiton, retires from the corruption of
political London to the quiet retreat of his country estate. Out hunting one day, he
hears the groans of a wounded man, who is bleeding profusely and muttering in Latin.
Our Scots hero, Milfeiton, converses with him in Latin, reassures him that he means
him no further harm and takes him back to his castle where he fetches a doctor to
look after his wounds. The man turns out to be an elderly Jew, Gamaleeth-Eleazar,
who tells Milfeiton all about his tragic adventures.
As a young man from a wealthy family, he had been forced to flee his home when
the Visir turned his attentions on his mother. He tells of the family’s flight into Libya
and refuge in a cave in the mountains, where he discovers a naked young lady, also
hiding in the mountains, whose father had fled persecution and death for possessing
the book of the philosoher’s stone. Of course, the young man falls madly in love with
the wild young lady, who had been living in the mountains since she was six years old,
and his destiny becomes linked with hers and with the protection of the philosopher’s
stone.
Du Perron’s novel was reprinted in revised form in 1733 under the same title. An
anonymous English translation appeared under the title The lady’s philosopher’s stone; or,
the Caprices of love and destiny, London 1725. All three versions of the text are very
scarce.
Provenance: Comtesse de Verrue (1670-1736), ‘femme d’esprit et des plaisirs’, one of
the great female bibliophiles of early eighteenth century France and for many years the
mistress of the Victor Amadeus, King of Piedmont. She was the subject of the novel,
La dame de volupté, 1863 (attributed to Dumas, who may have seen it through the press)
and the magnificent 1990 film, The King’s Whore, starring Timothy Dalton. See
Quentin-Bauchard, Les Femmes Bibliophiles de France, I, pp. 411-429.
OCLC lists BN, University of Adelaide and Cleveland Public Library only.
Cioranescu 26707; Jones p. 35; Cohen-de Ricci c. 205.
28. DURY, John (1596-1680).
THE REFORMED-SCHOOL: and the Reformed Librarie-Keeper. By John Durie.
Whereunto is added I. An Idea of Mathematicks. II. The description of one of the
chiefest Libraries which is in Germanie, erected and ordered by one of the most
Learned Princes in Europe. London, printed by William Du-Gard, and are to bee sold
by Rob. Littleberrie at the sign of the Unicorn in Little Britain. 1651.
FIRST EDITION, COMBINED REISSUE. 12mo, (121 x 70mm), pp. [ii], [ii], [iii]-xi, [i], 13-
89, [1], [3], [3] blank, [iv], 65, [1], [2] blank, the second (original) title-page printed in red and
black, D12 of the first work and C12 of the second work are blanks, in contemporary sheep, gilt
fillet border and small central gilt stamp on covers, spine very worn, signs of gilt rules and decoration
and remains of lettering-piece, gilt, joints weak, extremities worn, from the library of the Earls of
Macclesfield with the North Library bookplate, shelf mark added in ink.
£9500
An excellent copy of two important texts by one of the key thinkers and educational
reformers of the Commonwealth period. John Dury was a Scottish Calvinist minister.
Born in Edinburgh and brought up in Leiden, Dury went to West Prussia to become
pastor to the Scots community at Ebling and it was there that he met Samuel Hartlib
and Commenius, with whom he formed close links and collaborated on many works
including the present. Hugh Trevor-Roper described Dury, Hartlib and Commenius as
‘the real philosophers, the only philosophers, of the English Revolution’ (‘Three
Foreigners: the Philosophers of the Puritan Revolution’ in Religion, the Reformation and
Social Change, 1972, p. 240).
In The Reformed-School, Dury sets out a plan for his ideal establishment of learning,
the importance of which is key to his entire philosophy. Intended to produce ‘good
commonwealth men’, the school is to be a boarding school for fifty boys, with a
governor and three ushers, in which a wide range of subjects is to be covered,
including husbandry, trade, navigation and administration in times of peace and war.
In 1749 Dury was appointed Deputy Librarian of the King’s Library in St. James’,
working with Bulstrode Whitelocke. His The Reformed Librarie-Keeper, published at
around the time he began his work in the library is thought by some to have been
prepared as a kind of curriculum vitae when pitching for the job. It is perhaps more
likely that he drew on his experience in the job in order to write this piece. At the
centre of his argument lies the idea of the sacramental nature of the librarian’s job, one
essentially linked, in a way that his job at the King’s Library would not have been, with
a community of scholars having access to the books.
‘[Dury, Hartlib and Commenius] combined a long list of practical plans with an
overall vision of how these fitted into the needed antecedent events to the millennium.
They made proposals for improving and reforming many aspects of human activities
and human institutions. The advancement of knowledge, the improvement of human
life, and the purification of religion, which included bringing the Jews and Christians
together, would prepare England for its role when God chose to transform human
history’ (Thomas F. Wright, introduction to The Reformed Librarie-Keeper, Online
Reader, Project Gutenberg).
‘That Dury's The Reformed Librarie-Keeper is part of his reform program preparatory to
the onset of the millennium is apparent both from its setting and its content ... The
Reformed School was a basic presentation of the ideas of Comenius, Hartlib, and Dury
for transforming the nature of education in such a way that from infancy people
would be directed in their striving toward universal knowledge and spiritual
betterment. The Supplement to the Reformed School deals with the role that universities
should take in preparing for the Kingdom of God, a role making them more actively
part of the world’ (ibid).
‘Having placed educational institutions in the scheme of things preparatory to the
millennium, Dury then proceeds to place library keeping and libraries in this scheme as
well. Unfortunately, according to Dury, library keepers had traditionally regarded their
positions as opportunities for profit and gain, not for "the service, which is to bee don
by them unto the Common-wealth of Israel, for the advancement of Pietie and
Learning" (p. 15). Library keepers "ought to becom Agents for the advancement of
universal Learning" and not just mercenary people (p. 17). Their role ought not to be
just to guard the books but to make them available to those seeking universal
knowledge and understanding of the Kingdom of God’ (ibid).
Both parts were first published separately; the present copy is a reissue of both
works, with new title pages. Unlike the majority of copies in ESTC, the present copy
retains both original titles-pages. The Reformed-School was first published with an
undated title-page in 1649 or 1650 (Wing D2883) and The Reformed Librarie-Keeper first
appeared in 1650 (Wing D2882). ‘The publisher to the Reader’ and ‘To the Reader’
are both signed by the editor, Samuel Hartlib.
The second part contains two supplementary essays. The first of these is an essay
on mathematics by John Pell (1611-1685). Addressed to Samuel Hartlib, it was written
around 1630-34 and was prepared for publication in 1634 by Hartlib, although the
edition was never printed. It therefore appeared for the first time as part of Dury’s
Reformed Librarie-Keeper.
The second appendix to The Reformed Librarie-Keeper is an essay, in Latin, on the
Herzog August Bibliothek, ‘The description of one of the chiefest Libraries which is in
Germanie’ (pp. [47]-65). Attributed most frequently to Johann Schwartzkopf (15961695) but also to Julius Scheurl (1600-1651), this appears to be the first printing of The
description, which was published separately at Wolfenbuttel in 1653.
Wing D2884; ESTC r215378, listing BL, Birmingham, Cambridge (3 copies),
Congregational Library (3 copies), Dr. Williams’s Library, Glasgow University and
Bodleian in the UK; and Boston Public, New York Public, Clark, Toronto and Yale.
29. EARLE, Jabez (1676?-1768).
VERSES UPON SEVERAL OCCASIONS. By J. Earle, Chaplain to His Grace the
Duke of Douglas. printed by W. D. London: 1723.
FIRST EDITION. 12mo, (157 x 90mm), pp. [xii], 81, 92-93, in contemporary sprinkled calf,
double gilt filet border to covers, plain spine ruled in gilt in compartments, upper section of front joint
cracked but otherwise a fabulous copy.
£2000
A wonderful copy of this scarce volume of verse by a Presbyterian minister, pastor of
the ministry at Hanover Street, Long Acre, chaplain to the Duke of Douglas and later
a trustee of Dr. Williams’s Foundation. In 1730 he was appointed the Tuesday lecturer
at Salters’ Hall, a post he held until his death in 1768, when he was well into his
nineties. As well as publishing numerous sermons and devotional works, Earle was
one of the seven contributors to The Occasional Papers, 1716-1718. Published as a series
of monthly essays - and known as ‘The Bagweel Papers’, from the initials of the seven
authors - these were of huge significance in the theological development of English
Presbyterianism.
Earle was also a noted classicist who was renowned for being able to recite
hundreds of lines from his favourite Greek and Latin authors well into old age. He
married three times and is famously said to have described his wives as ‘the world, the
flesh and the devil’. In explaining the difference between exportation and
transportation, he is said to have told one of these hapless wives, ‘If you were
exported I should be transported’.
The poems in this collection are largely written in quatrains, with the second and
fourth lines rhyming. The running and drop-head titles read ‘Hymns on Various
Occasions’ and there is a note on the verso of the final dedication leaf reading, ‘Errata
in the Running Title. For Hymns read Verses’. The dedication is to Mrs. Susanna
Langford. A slightly expanded second edition was published in 1724.
This is an excellent copy of a very rare collection of verse: a charming slim volume
in a contemporary binding.
ESTC t174991, at the Congregational Library (2 copies), Glasgow University Library,
the Bodleian, Brotherton and the Library of Congress only.
Foxon p. 211.
30. ENGLISH, Harriet.
CONVERSATIONS AND AMUSING TALES. Offered to the Publick for the
Youth of Great Britain. London: printed for the Author, by Charles Clarke,
Notrhumberland Court, Strand. Published by Hatchard, Piccadilly; and sold by Cadell
and Davies, Strand; Egerton, White Hall; Faulder, New Bond Street; Peacock, Oxford
Street; Newberry, St. Paul’s Church Yard; and Darton and Harvey, Gracechurch
Street. 1799.
FIRST EDITION. 4to, (236 x 177mm), engraved frontispiece by Bartolozzi after W. Hamilton,
and pp. [iii]-xi, [iii], 385, [2] blank, [2] music, [6] list of subscribers, bound without the half-title,
p. 329 misnumbered 293, with twelve numbered oval stipple engraved plates, printed in aquatint,
eight of them with the loose tissue guard still present, engraved coat of arms at the head of the
dedication and numerous woodcut tail-pieces, in contemporary English vellum, blue ruled border on
covers, spine gilt in compartments with blue stained compartment lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers,
gilt edges, with the heraldic bookplate of Michael and Lavinia Smiley and the pencilled note ‘Ex
Castle Fraser May 1993’.
£1600
A delightful children’s book in an attractive, sturdy vellum binding of the period,
printed on thick paper. The text comprises twelve conversations between an aunt and
her charges: two nephews, two nieces and two friends. Each conversation is
accompanied by a very attractive tiny stipple engraving of a scene from nature. Short
stories are included, read either by the aunt or one of the children, as are fables,
allegories, proverbs etc. In each case, the short reading is followed by a discussion
between aunt and children, in which their natural responses are encouraged and
guided.
‘The dedicatory letter, signed by Harriet English and dated May 19th, 1799, is
addressed to Her Royal Highness, the Princess Amelia, the youngest daughter of
George III ... During the course of a year from New Year’s Day until New Year’s Eve,
an aunt, through conversations and stories, tries to improve her six nieces and
nephews. The words and music for the song “Address to the British fair” by S.
Webbe are followed at the end by the “List of subscribers” which includes the names
of the Countess of Strathmore, Mrs. Barbauld, and R. Crew’ (The Osborne Collection of
Early Children’s Books, II, 884).
ESTC t34058; Roscoe J101; Osborne Collection, II, 884.
31. FALCONAR, Maria (b. 1770 or 1771) and Harriet (b. 1774?).
POETIC LAURELS for Characters of Distinguished Merit; interspersed with Poems,
Moral and Entertaining: dedicated to His Royal Highness George Prince of Wales, by
Maria and Harriet Falconar, authors of A Collection of Poems, and Slavery, a Tract.
printed at the Logographic Press; and sold by J. Walter, no. 169, Piccadilly, opposite
Old Bond Street. London: 1791.
FIRST EDITION. 4to, (266 x 207mm), engraved frontispiece portrait by W. Scott ‘from a
drawing by R. Cosway’, and pp. [iii]-xvi, 88, without the half-title but with the single-sheet list of
subscribers with just over a hundred names, in contemporary tree calf, upper joint cracking but firm,
plain spine ruled in gilt with red morocco label lettered in gilt, with two manuscript shelf-mark labels
and the booklabel of James O. Edwards.
£2200
A scarce collection of juvenile verse written by two young Scottish girls. Maria
Falconar’s first literary appearance was in December 1786, at the age of fifteen, when
two of her poems appeared in the European Magazine. In the following year, she
contributed again, along with her sister, Harriet, who would have been twelve or
thirteen at the time. In 1788 the sisters’ first volume of verse was published by Joseph
Johnson, with an impressive list of some four hundred subscribers, including Hugh
Blair, William Roscoe, Anna Seward and Helen Maria Williams. Then aged seventeen
and fourteen, the preface to that work describes them as ‘these lisping Sapphos’ who
had dedicated their hours stolen from repose ‘in such studies and meditations as their
little fancies suggested to them’. A second volume, Poems on Slavery, appeared later in
the same year.
‘Their Poetic Laurels (1791)’, writes Roger Lonsdale, ‘when they would be aged about
20 and 17, had fewer subscribers, but shows them adapting to the new poetic tastes of
the 1790s: Harriet’s ‘A Fragment’, for example, is a visionary poem full of spectres,
frenzy, and despair’ (Lonsdale, Eighteenth Century Women Poets, p. 451). The Preface,
which describes the present work as ‘more correct, and less juvenile in its
composition’ than the previous two volumes, explains the lack of subscribers: ‘The
names prefixed to this are less by 400 than to the first: but the same exertions have not
been made, as our trust in the good opinion of our friends has induced us to believe
they would not require a second personal application’ (p. viii).
The present selection also has poems by a third Falconar, Juliet, who supplies ‘A
Sonnet’, p. 15 and ‘A Song’, p. 59. Additionally there are three prefatory poems
addressed to the two sisters: ‘Lines addressed to M. and H. Falconar by Miss Savage’,
‘To Miss Maria Falconar’, by Catherine Stephens, ‘from my Cottage, Wandsworthroad’, and ‘To Miss H. Falconar’ by Mary Dawes Blackett, of Curzon-Street, May-Fair.
The poems by Maria and Harriet include ‘An Address, written for, and Spoken at, the
Benefit of a Distressed Gentlewoman’, a poem on Bath, poems addressed to R.B.
Sheridan and one to the Duchess of Devonshire, two poems on the moon, Maria’s
‘Ode to the Moon’, p. 17 and Harriet’s ‘To the Moon’, p. 31 and an ‘Ode to
Melancholy’ by Maria Falconar.
Following the present publication, nothing is heard of the Falconar sisters.
Lonsdale suggests that perhaps the ‘untypically facetious’ lines of ‘A Prefatory Epistle’,
in the present work, suggest that they may have been ready ‘for the anonymity of
marriage’, adding that it is quite possible that they could have continued publishing
under their unidentified married names.
‘Stay, gentle Child of Taste! whoe’er thou art,
Listen, for Mercy’s sake, and take our part;
See where the critics, poring o’er our book,
Threat with each motion, kill with ev’ry look,
Growl o’er the title page - What’s here, Miss Flirt!
You’d better make a pudding - or a shirt;
Poetic Laurels! there’s a pretty puff!
Poor silly wenches, what a string of stuff! ...
‘Twere best would each young woman mend her life,
And learn to be a decent, careful wife’ (pp. ix - x).
Jackson, Romantic Poetry by Women, p. 123, no 3; Lonsdale, Eighteenth Century Women
Poets, pp. 451-452.
ESTC t42693 locates copies at BL, Cambridge, Bodley; Harvard, Huntington and
Stanford only. OCLC adds NLS.
32.
FAUQUES DE LA CÉPEDE, Marianne-Agnès Pillement, Madame
Falques, dite Mlle. (ca. 1720-1777).
ABBASSAÏ, histoire orientale. Première [-Troisième] Partie. De l’Imprimerie de
Bagdad, et se trouve à Paris. Chez Bauche Fils, Libraire, Quay des Augusins, à l’Image
Ste. Géneviéve. [Paris:] 1753.
FIRST EDITION. Three volumes bound in two, 12mo, (136 x 77mm), engraved frontispiece to
each part and pp. iv, 206; iv, 217; iv, 176, 19, [1], tears on I, 63 without loss and I 135, losing a
small part of the margin only; in contemporary heraldic calf, with the arms of the Duc de Tallard gilt
on both covers, spines attractively gilt in compartments, discreet repair work at the foot of the spines,
with a book-label removed from the front pastedowns, marbled endpapers, red edges.
£2200
A lovely copy bound in contemporary heraldic calf, the three volumes bound as two.
A scarce novel with an eastern setting, which tells of the misfortunes of its heroine,
Abbassaï, and of various other unhappy female characters, whose stories the author
uses to highlight the vulnerable situation of women in society. Although set in the
east, it is only a small leap to read the text as a critique of contemporary French
society, particularly given some knowledge of the life of the author.
Mademoiselle Falques was sent into a convent against her wishes at an early age.
After ten years she managed to have her vows annulled and was allowed to leave the
convent. After reconciliation with her family, she went to live in Paris where she
started to write novels for a living. She published some ten works, mainly fiction and
including a biography of Madame de Pompadour. Whilst in Paris she was wooed by
an Englishman, 'un grand seigneur anglais', brought to England and then abandoned
by him. She began writing again, under the name Madame de Vaucluse, with
apparently some success. Lady Craven, the future margrave d'Anspach, employed her
to give French lessons to her children.
Abbassaï
was
only
republished once in French, in
Supplément à la Bibliothéque de
campagne, Geneva 1761 but it
was more popular in England,
perhaps because Mademoiselle
Fauques was better known
here.
Two
different
translations were published,
both anonymous, Abbassai: An
Eastern Novel, London 1759
and Oriental Anecdotes, or, the
History of Haroun Alrachid,
London 1764. The translator’s
preface to the second of these
editions gives some interesting
biographical details about
Mademoiselle
Fauques’
unhappy affair with Pietro
Paulo Celesia, the Genoese
ambassador in London.
OCLC lists BN, BL, Leiden,
NYPL, UCLA, DLC and
Harvard.
MMF 53.14; Cioranescu 28205.
Provenance: the Duc de
Tallard, with his arms gilt on
both covers.
33. FULLOM, Stephen Watson (d. 1872).
THE HISTORY OF WOMAN, and her Connexion with Religion Civilization, and
Domestic Manners. From the Earliest Period. By S.W. Fullom, author of ‘The
Marvels of Science’, ‘The Great Highway’, etc. etc. In Two Volumes. Vol. I [-II].
London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans. 1855.
FIRST EDITION. Two volumes, (185 x 111), 12mo, pp. viii, 374; [iv], 334, in contemporary
full red English morocco, elaborately gilt, spine gilt in compartments and lettered and numbered in gilt,
dentelles and edges gilt, with the discreet red library stamp of Queen Marie of Hanover on the verso of
both title-pages.
£2500
A stunning copy, from the library of the dedicatee, the Queen of Hanover,
sumptuously bound in red morocco, presumably commissioned for presentation to
her. This scarce first edition of what immediately became a very popular work charts
the public progress of the influence of women on society through the ages.
‘At a moment when the social position of woman is daily becoming a question of
greater and more general interest, it seems not inopportune to look back on her past
history, and ascertain what has been the effect of the female character on human
progress at particular periods, and under different degrees of civilization’ (Preface).
Although this first edition is very scarce, the work evidently met with considerable
success, as second and third editions followed in the same year, and appear to have
been printed in much greater numbers. A Swedish translation was published under the
title Qvinnans historia och hennes förhållande till religionen, civilisationen och det husliga lifvet, från
de äldsta tider intill våra dagar, Stockholm, A. Hellsten, 1856.
Provenance: from the library of Queen Marie of Hanover (1818-1907). Her library
was dispersed with the library of Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland and King of
Hanover.
a rare course of singing
bound with songs by Rossini, Auber, Boieldieu, Romagnesi and Paisiello.
34. GARAUDÉ, Alexis (1779-1852).
PETITE MÉTHODE DE CHANT Dédiée aux Dames à l’usage de la Maison Royale
établie à St. Denis pour l’Education des filles des Membres de la Légion d’honneur.
Contenant les préceptes de cet Art, 50 Exercices pour la Voix et 12 Vocalises ou
Morceaux de Chant sans Paroles avec la Basse chiffrée. Composée par A. Garaudé de
la Chapelle du Roi, Auteur des Solfèges ou Méthode de Musique adoptée pour
l’instruction des Pages de la Musique du Roi. Nouvelle Edition Corrigée. Oeuvre 15.
A Paris [rest of imprint obscured by a printed slip reading: ‘A Rouen, chez Ches
Jacqmin-Brière, Successeur de sa Mère, Luthier et Marchand de Musique, rue GrandPont, no. 65’]. 1811.
‘Nouvelle Edition Corrigée’; reissued in Rouen with a printed slip pasted over the
imprint. Folio, (324 x 244mm), pp. [ii], 39, text and musical score engraved throughout, bound
after twenty other pieces of music, many of which bear the similar pasted imprint to that on the
Garaudé, in full green morocco, gilt, unlettered spine gilt in compartments, red morocco shield in the
centre of the front cover, gilt and labelled ‘Mme L.T.’, offered with two other folio volumes from the
same library, folio (335 x 250mm), green morocco, covers lettered in gilt ‘A.L.T.’ within gilt border
in lozenge shape, spines gilt.
£3000
A scarce course in singing written for young ladies by Alexis de Garaudé, composer
and professor of singing at the Conservatoire. A number of his works became the
standard textbooks on the subject and remained so into the twentieth century.
Garaudé is considered an important representative of the French romantic movement
and is also remembered for his piano works and the opera La lyre enchantée. This
edition contains a ‘Nouvelle Préface’ dated October 1811 in which Garaudé advertises
his Nouvelle Méthode de Chant, due to appear on 15 December 1811, priced 21 francs.
‘Celle ce ne peut donc être regardée que comme un abrégé très imparfait ... j’étais
même dans l’intention de supprimer tout à fait cette PETITE MÉTHODE; mais la
modicité de son prix [9 francs] m’a engagé à la laisser subsister dans le commerce de
musique, au moins pour quelque tems’ (p. 2).
Garaudé’s course book is here delightfully bound in contemporary green morocco,
in a presentation binding for a ‘Madame L. T.’, whose initials are stamped on a central
red morocco shield. It follows a selection of numerous song-sheets, various extracts
and some separately printed songs, giving words and accompaniment. Composers
represented in the collection include Rossini, Auber, Boieldieu, Romagnesi and
Paisiello. Many of the pieces have a pasted in slip from the Rouen printer: ‘A Rouen,
chez Ches Jacqmin-Brière, Successeur de sa Mère, Luthier et Marchand de Musique,
rue Grand-Pont, no. 65’, some pages also bear stamps or signatures and a couple of
the songs have illustrated title-pages. This volume is offered with two other similar
volumes that appear to have been bound for the same lady, also in green morocco but
without the central red morocco shield, these two very slightly larger, and more simply
gilt on the covers with the intitials ‘A.L.T.’. These volumes have a similar content to
the first volume, but some of the pieces bear the later slip ‘A Rouen, chez Eder, Succr
de Jacqmin, Editeur, Marchand de Musique et d’instuments, rue Grand-Pont, no. 65’.
OCLC lists Yale only.
35. GAUDET, François Charles (fl. 1763).
COLIFICHETS POETIQUES. Par Monsieur Bicomonolofalati. A la Chine [ie Paris]
chez Ribabinschelvelminiche. Imprimeur du Roy. 1741.
FIRST EDITION. 12mo in eights and fours, (160 x 88mm), pp. 118, title page printed in red and
black, some damptstaining in text, mainly marginal, in contemporary mottled calf, spine gilt in
compartments, red morocco label lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers, red sprinkled edges, library stamp
of the Bibliothèque de Montauban and the later armorial bookplate of Robert Garrisson.
£500
A very scarce collection of facetious poetry (the title translates as ‘poetical trinkets’)
published under a false ‘China’ imprint and under a false name ‘Monsieur
Bicomonolofalati’. Attributed to François Charles Gaudet, although not listed by
Cioranescu , who records _Les colfichets, ou poésies badines et sérieuses par M.F.
Gaud**, Amsterdam 1746. The work opens with a preface and concludes with a
short story ‘Histoire qu’il faut lire pour sçavoir ce qu’elle contient’ (pp. 102-118).
‘Les Préfaces sont inutiles; on n’en lit plus; peut-être qu’on a raison; peut-être qu’on
a tort: quoi qu’il en soit, on n’en lit plus. Eh vraiment oui, lire des Préfaces! elles ne
sont plus à la mode. Cela est vrai, les Préfaces ne sont plus à la mode; elles y ont été,
elles n’y sont pas aujourd’hui, elles y seront demain; la mode est une Déesse
inconstante’.
OCLC lists Mannheim, Yale and BN only.
See Cioranescu 30394.
36. GIBBES, Phebe (fl. 1764-1805).
THE HISTORY OF MISS SOMMERVILE. Written by a Lady. In two volumes.
Vol. I [-II]. printed for Newbery and Carnan, no. 65, the North-Side of St. Paul’s
Church-Yard. London, 1769.
FIRST EDITION. Two volumes, small 8vo, (152 x 84mm), pp. [iv], 240 (ie. 236: misnumbered
after p. 226); [iv], 259, with the half-titles, some offsetting, a handsome copy in contemporary pale
calf, spines ruled and numbered in gilt, with red morocco labels lettered in gilt, with the neat ownership
inscription of Baron von Poellnitz on both titles, plain endpapers, sprinkled edges.
£5000
An excellent copy of a rare epistolary novel, in a pale, contemporary calf binding in
stunning condition. Attributed to Phebe Gibbes, a prolific novelist who wrote
fashionable novels of sensibility largely for the circulating libraries. In 1804 she told
the Royal Literary Fund that she had published twenty-two novels, as well as children’s
books, translations from the French and pieces for periodicals such as the London
Magazine. Many of these remain untraced. At the time of her appeal to the RLF, she
was a widow with two daughters, struggling against poverty following financial
mismanagement by her husband’s family, who opposed ‘every species of Literature,
except devotional’.
According to The Feminist Companion, her work has ‘style and wit’. Two of her
novels receive special notice: Friendship in a Nunnery, or the American Fugitive, 1778,
where the theme of female friendship is examined along with the freedom in marriage
choice, and ‘the convent option [which] is thoroughly debunked by a young American
woman, whose republican opinions offended conservative reviewers’ and Hartly House,
Calcutta, 1789, which Gibbes claimed to have written in order to combat prejudice
against India (where her son died) and to discuss literature, courtship and women’s
role in society. Joseph Johnson published at least one of her novels, Elfrida, or Paternal
Ambition, London 1786.
The History of Miss Sommervile is a well-written and exciting epistolary novel with a
rather dramatic plot which centres on the disappearance and recovery of the beautiful
eponymous heroine. The novel opens on a party of travellers, including Miss
Sommervile, who are delayed for days in Holyhead, awaiting favourable winds to take
them to Dublin, where they eventually arrive only to find that the young lady, by now
much admired by several gentlemen of the party, has vanished. A Dublin edition was
published in the same year (ESTC n7433, at Trinity College and Penn only). Reviews
of this novel appeared in the Critical Review, XXVII, 373-382, May 1769 and in the
Monthly Review, LXI, 76-77, July 1769.
ESTC t66903, listing BL, Boston PL, Harvard, DLC, UCLA, Chicago, North Carolina
and Penn.
Raven p. 313.
first appearance of poems by Congreve and Aphra Behn
37. GILDON, Charles (1665-1724).
CONGREVE, William (1670-1729).
BEHN, Aphra (1640-1689).
DACIER, André (1651-1722).
BUCKINGHAM, George Villiers, Duke of (1628-1687).
MILTON, John (1608-1674).
COWLEY, Abraham (1618-1667).
MISCELLANY POEMS upon Several Occasions: Consisting of Original Poems, by
the late Duke of Buckingham, Mr. Cowley, Mr. Milton, Mr. Prior, Mrs. Behn, Mr.
Tho. Brown, &c. And the Translations from Horace, Persius, Petronius Arbiter, &c.
With an Essay on Satyr, by the famous Mr. Dacier. Licens’d May 21. 1692. printed for
Peter Buck, at the Sign of the Temple, near Temple-Bar, in Fleet-Street. London,
1692.
FIRST EDITION. 8vo, (172 x 100mm), pp. [xxxii], 112, in contemporary red morocco, double
filet border to covers, central panel gilt, with gilt fleurons at the corners and small oval floral tooling at
the mid-point of the panels, some rubbing, unlettered spine simply ruled in gilt, with the booklabel of
J.O. Edwards.
£5000
A handsome copy in red morocco of one of the most interesting poetical miscellanies
of the late seventeenth century. This collection marks the poetical debut of William
Congreve, at the age of twenty-two. His contributions include two imitations of
Horace, a Pindaric ode called ‘Upon a Lady’s Singing’, addressed to the well-known
soprano, Arabella Hunt, and two songs, ‘The Message’ and ‘The Decay’, signed only
with initials. Also of particular interest are three poems by Aphra Behn, all printed
here for the first time: ‘On a Conventicle’, ‘Venus and Cupid’ and ‘Verses design’d by
Mrs. A. Behn, to be sent to a fair lady, that desir’d she would absent herself, to cure
her love’, the last one being ‘left unfinished’.
This is one of the earliest productions of Charles Gildon, at the start of his long and
productive, if sometimes controversial, literary career. His own contributions include
the translation from Dacier, two poems addressed ‘To Sylvia’, an imitation of Perseus
and a ten-page dedication to Cardell Goodman, a prominent and wealthy actor, who
Gildon clearly had in his sights as a patron. ‘As to the book, Sir, I present you with, I
am extreamly satisfy’d to know, that it is a present worth your acceptance; for I may
say that there has scarce been a collection which visited the world, with fewer trifling
verses in it. I except my own, which I had the more encouragement to print now,
since I had so good an opportunity of making so large an attonement, with the wit of
others for my dulness, and that I hope will chiefly excuse them to you, as well as
convince the world of the real value I have for you, when it sees me prefix your name
to no vulgar book, of my own composing, but to one that ows [sic] its excellence to
the generous contributions of my friends of undoubted wit’ (Epistle Dedicatory, p. xi).
ESTC r21564, predictably common in England, especially in Oxford and Cambridge,
but fairly scarce in America: Folger, Harvard, Huntington, Newberry, Clark, Kansas,
Texas and Yale.
Wing G733A; Case 197; O’Donnell, Aphra Behn, BB20.
in an English binding - three years before the English translation
38. GOETHE, Johann Wolfgang von (1749-1832).
DEYVERDUN, Georges (ca. 1735-1789), translator.
WERTHER, Traduit de l’Allemand. Première [-Seconde] Partie. chez Jean-Edme
Dufour & Philippe Roux, Imprimeurs & Libraires, associés. A Maestricht, 1776.
FIRST EDITION OF THIS TRANSLATION. Two volumes in one, 12mo, (164 x 93mm), pp.
[ii], 201, [1], [2] blank; [ii], 224, viii, 225-230, attractive engraved vignettes on the titles by
Chodowiecki, parts of the preliminary leaves misbound towards the end of the second volume, tears on
II, 31 and II, 193, touching text but with no loss, in contemporary English quarter calf over
marbled boards, corners bumped, front joint cracked but cords holding, plain spine with red morocco
label lettered in gilt: a delicate but attractive copy.
£2000
The scarce first edition of Deyverdun’s translation of Goethe’s masterpiece into
French. Goethe’s first novel, Die Leiden des jungen Werters, Leipzig 1774 was an
overnight best-seller and its influence on the European novel and the Romantic
movement is hard to exaggerate. Four different French translations of Goethe’s work
appeared within the first few years of its publication, as well as innumerable
adaptations and imitations. But it was the present translation, by Deyverdun, that first
took France by storm, running to at least nine editions by 1794. It was also through
Deyverdun’s translation that the novel arrived in England as the first English
translation, printed by Dodsley in 1779 and attributed both to Daniel Malthus, father
of the economist, and Richard Graves, is thought to have been made from
Deyverdun’s French text and not from the original German.
The other French translation to be published in 1776 was by Baron Theresius
Joseph Carl Sigismund Ludwig von Seckendorff and it appeared under the title Les
souffrances du jeune Werther, en deux parties, Erlang, Wolfgang Walther, 1776.
Seckendorff’s translation may have preceded Deyverdun’s, but it was not reprinted.
The following year saw a translation by Comte Woldmar von Schmettau, Les passions
du jeune Werther, ouvrage traduit de l’allemand de M. Goethe par monsieur Aubry, Manheim &
Paris, Pissot, 1777, another translation that was extremely popular, running to even
more editions than Deyverdun’s. The last direct French translation of the century was
simply titled Werther, traduit de l’allemand, Basle, 1800 and was by L.C. de Salse. This
translation, despite its criticism of the previous translations (’l’on a déjà différentes
traductions françoises de cet ouvrage, mais aucune de compléte, ni qui s’approche de
l’original’) appears only to have been reprinted once, in 1803, an interlinear edition
with the original German.
The English press did not greet Goethe’s first appearance with much excitement:
‘Notwithstanding the translator attempts in his preface to palliate the pernicious
tendency of the work before us, we cannot but agree with those who consider Mr.
Goethé, its original author, as the apologist of suicide’ (Critical Review, June 1779).
William Enfield, with mixed praise, added a rather dismissive tone to his criticism: ‘In
this little work is drawn, by a masterly hand, a lively picture of the horrors of a mind
disordered by the phrensy of a disappointed passion, and at length abandoning itself
to despair, and seeking refuge from its sorrows in a voluntary death. An excellent
moral may be deduced from it - if the reader pleases’ (Monthly Review, July 1779).
This is an attractive, if slightly delicate, copy in a contemporary English binding. As
the first English translation of Werter did not appear until 1779, this copy may have
been one of the earliest versions of the novel imported into England. In this copy, the
preliminary leaves i-viii, have been misbound towards the end of the second volume.
These pages comprise the ‘Préface du Traducteur’ (pp. i-v) and the ‘Préface de
l’Auteur’ (pp. vii-viii) and they are bound, after the end of the novel itself and in the
middle of the final section, ‘Observations du Traducteur sur Werther, & les Écrits
publiés à l’occasion de cet Ouvrage’ (II, pp. 203-230), in which Deyverdun discusses
the reception of Goethe’s novel and lists some of the imitations that had already
appeared, in French and German. The title pages to both volumes have very pretty
engravings by Daniel Nicolaus Chodowiecki (1754-1794).
OCLC lists a handful of copies in continental Europe and BL, Cambridge, London
University, Yale, Harvard, Morgan, Texas and Brown.
MMF 76.27. See also Garside, Raven & Schöwerling 1779:10.
39. GRAHAM, George (1673-1751).
AN ACCOUNT OF A COMPARISON made by some Gentlemen of the Royal
Society, of the Standard of a Yard, and the several Weights lately made for their Use:
with the Original Standards of Measures and Weights in the Exchequer: and with
some others kept for public Use, at Guildhall, Founders-Hall, the Tower, &c. London:
Printed 1744.
[with:] PENKETHMAN, John.
A COLLECTION of several Authentick Accounts of the History and Price of Wheat,
Bread, Malt, &c. From the coming in of William the Conquerour to Michaelmas 1745.
With some occasional Remarks. London, printed for W. Warden, and sold by C.
Davis, over against Gray’s-Inn Gate, Holbourn, 1748.
[with:] CLEMENT, Simon, merchant.
A DISCOURSE of the General Notions of Money, Trade, & Exchanges, as they stand
in Relation each to other. Attempted by way of Aphorism: with a Letter to a Minister
of State, further Explaining the Aphorisms, and Applying them to the present
Circumstances of this Nation. Wherein also some Thoughts are Suggested for the
Remedying the Abuses of our Money. By a Merchant. London, 1695.
Three works in one volume, 4to, (215 x 158mm), Penkethman: engraved frontispiece and pp. [10],
3, [5], 25-30, [4], 27-60, [3], 62-79, [1], with one further engraved plate and a folding engraved
table, without the advertisement leaf; Graham: pp. [2], 17, [1]; Clement: 38, [1], title-page and
verso of the postscript dust-stained, in contemporary (mid-eighteenth century) half speckled calf over
marbled boards, front joint cracking and weak, back joint cracking along the upper compartment,
spine gilt in compartments with floral tooling and rules, red morocco label lettered ‘Miscellaneo’, with
the contents of the volume listed in manuscript in a contemporary hand on the front free endpaper, with
the Macclesfield bookplate, manuscript shelf mark and blind stamp, with red speckled edges. £3000
A very scarce account of some of George Graham’s experiments to establish weights
and measures. The description of the various procedures used in comparing the
standards of a yard are laid down clearly with the results. ‘Mr. George Graham, F.R.S.
was thereupon requested, with such other Assistance as he should find necessary, to
take upon him the Comparison of the said several Standards; which he has accordingly
done, and carefully viewed and examined the same, at the Exchequer, on Friday the
22d of April last, in the Presence of the President of the Society, the Right
Honourable the Earl of Macclesfield ... [&c]’ (p. 3). This copy is from the Macclesfield
library: it was the second Earl, George Parker, who was present during the
experiments.
George Graham, a clockmaker by trade, was the foremost mechanician of his day.
He is credited with the invention of the mercury pendulum and the ‘Graham’ or ‘dead
beat escapement’. He was also a key player in practical astronomy and invented many
astronomical instruments that were sold and used throughout Europe. ‘His manual
dexterity was remarkable, and his precision of construction and thoroughness of work
unrivalled. Graham made for Halley the great mural quadrant at Greenwich
observatory and also the fine transit instrument and the zenith sector used by Bradley
in his discoveries ... [he] constructed the most complete planetarium known at that
time in which the motions of the celestial bodies were demonstrated with great
accuracy’ (James Burnley in DNB).
Two other works are bound in the same volume: the first is a reprint of John
Penkethman’s treatise on the price of bread. First published in 1638 under the title
Artachthos and first reprinted in 1745, although very rare in that form, this is a reissue
of the 1745 sheets with a new title-page and a new frontispiece copied from the 1638
edition, with the text surrounded by thirteen small vignettes depicting the various
stages of bread-making. Penkethman was a professional accountant living in Chancery
Lane. The principal part of the text lists the prices which bakers could ask for their
loaves, according to the fluctuating price of wheat. These tables were designed to
replace those of the traditional ‘Assize of Bread’ which had been printed at regular
intervals since the early sixteenth century. The second part of the work, with its own
title-page and plate, is called ‘A true relation of the most remarkable dearths and
famines, which have happened within this realme since the coming in of William the
Conquerour, to Michaelmas 1745’.
The final work in the volume is a collection of 72 economic ‘aphorisms’ followed by
a long letter of explanation and an appendix ‘offering some further reasons against
raising the value of our coin’. Simon Clement was a London merchant who published
several titles during the coinage controversy of the 1690s, generally siding with Locke
against Lowndes. ‘Clement’s pamphlets are well worth studying. Though not free
from mercantilist errors, he anticipated in some respects the conclusions of later
writers’ (Palgrave).
Penkethman: ESTC t6640; Kress 4921.
Graham: ESTC n47582, listing Stanford University only.
Clement: ESTC r38746; Wing C4638; Kress 1873.
in green morocco by Thomas Van Os
40. HEMSTERHUIS, Frans (1721-1790).
ARISTÉE ou de la Divinité. A Paris. 1779.
FIRST EDITION. 12mo, (162 x 94), pp. x, 208, preserving the initial blank, the engraved
vignette on the title-page and the head- and tail-pieces are unsigned, in contemporary green morocco,
unsigned binding, possibly by Thomas Van Os,
£1500
A scarce philosophical work by the 'Dutch Socrates', Frans Hemsterhuis, a Dutch
aesthete who lavished as much care in the design of his works as he did in their
composition. He wrote a number of essays and dialogues on moral philosophy which
brought him into contact with Goethe, Herder and his life-long friend, Princess
Amalia von Gallitzin, who did much to strengthen his reputation amongst the German
intelligentsia and encourage the translation of many of his works. Hemsterhuis' ideas
influenced some of the greatest German thinkers, including Kant, Novalis, Schlegel
and Schiller.
As with all of Hemsterhuis' works, Aristée was privately printed and distributed.
The printing is typically elegant, the text block measuring 93 x 47 mm, a small and
dense block of text within wide margins, in the present copy measuring 167 x 96 mm.
The elaborate green morocco binding on this copy is probably by Thomas Van Os, a
leading binder of the last quarter of the eighteenth century in the Netherlands. Van
Os was commissioned by Hemsterhuis to create bindings for some of his later works,
alongside Christiaan Micke, who bound so many copies of Hemsterhuis’ earlier works
for presentation. Of the two, Van Os is more associated with the flat spine, as here, in
addition to which this binding bears many similarities with the two bindings
(particularly fig. 7) by Van Os reproduced in Jan Storm van Leeuwen’s article in The
Book Collector (see The Book Collector, Summer 2001, figs. 6 and 7, pp. 215-216).
'So, let this stand as a charge to collect Hemsterhuis', writes Roger Stoddard in
conclusion, 'to look more closely at his books, to solve their mysteries, and to connect
the careful designs of his bookmaking with the philosophical texts they embrace and
convey with such eloquence. This is just a way of asking you to leave your place
marker here to honour Hemsterhuis who always provided a ribbon place marker in the
bindings he commissioned for presentation' (p. 189).
See Roger Eliot Stoddard, 'François Hemsterhuis: Some Uncollected Authors VIII', in
The Book Collector, Summer 2001, pp. 186-201; Jan Storm van Leeuwen, 'Frans
Hemsterhuis' Binders and some bindings on Lettre sur l'Homme, ibid, pp. 202-216.
Stoddard 9.
41. HEVENESI, Gábor, S.J. (1656-1715).
PIETAS QUOTIDIANA erga Beatissimam Virginem Mariam sine labe Conceptam
ad Vitam pie ducendam, mortemque Sancte obeundam accommodata Dominis
Sodalibus Congregationis Majoris Litteratorum Lucernensis in Xenium Oblata. Cum
Facultate Superiorum. Typis Henrici Ignatii Nicomedis Hautt, Lucernae, Anno 1748.
8vo, (160 x 94mm), engraved frontispiece and pp. [viii]. 367, [1], in contemporary red morocco, gilt
border to covers, faded, spine gilt in compartments, a few scratches and marks to the cover, gilt edges,
colourful gilt paste-downs.
£500
A scarce edition of Gabriel Hevenesi’s popular devotional work to the Virgin Mary.
Numerous editions were published throughout the century under slightly different
titles and are mostly now quite scarce. With an attractive engraved frontispiece by
Mauber and colourful Dutch gilt paste-downs.
Sommervogel, Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes et pseudonymes publiés par des religieux de la
Compagnie de Jésus, 1884, no. 722.
OCLC lists only one copy, at the Mediathèque Valais-Sion.
from the library of Diane-Adélaïde de Mailly, mistress to Louis XV
42. HUERNE DE LA MOTHE, François Charles (18th century).
LETTRES ET MEMOIRES DE MADEMOISELLE DE G ***. et du Comte de S.
Fl***. Première [Seconde] Partie. et se trouve à Paris, chez la Veuve Damonneville &
Musier Fils, Quai des Augustins. Duchesne, Rue Saint Jacques. Dufour, Quai de
Gêvres. A Londres, 1772 (in error for 1762); [volume II. 1762].
FIRST EDITION. 12mo in eights and fours, (165 x 95mm), pp. [ii], ii, 159, [1]; [ii], 104, in
contemporary heraldic calf, with the arms of the Duchesse de Brancas-Lauraguais gilt on the covers,
triple filet gilt, flat spine gilt in compartments with floral tooling, red morocco label lettered in gilt,
marbled endpapers, red edges.
£1650
A beautiful copy of a rare novel, from the library of one of the mistresses of Louis
XV. A largely epistolary novel (with occasional first-person commentary) set in Paris
and in the east of France, in Nancy and Strasbourg, and telling of court intrigues
involving a number of historical characters, including the Cardinal de Rohan. The
work was printed in the Mercure de France in 1760, where the names in the title were
given in full: ‘Mademoiselle de G***’ was revealed as Mademoiselle de Gondreville
and the ‘Comte de S. Fl***’ as the Comte de Saint Florent. However, the editor of the
Mercure de France stressed that the names were not given on the manuscript and had
only been provided in order to relieve the imagination of the reader. In the present
text, however, the anonymity is preserved, with the Avertissement de l’Editeur stressing
the need for caution, given that some of the principal players in the events described
were still alive. ‘La nouveauté des événemens que ce manuscrit renferme, a exigé par
prudence que les noms de ceux qu’ils concernent principalement n’ayent pas été mis;
& l’on a cru devoir seulement se servir de Lettres initiales pour les désigner’ (ii).
This work is Huerne de la Mothe’s first work of fiction and his first publication
following the Clairon scandal and his controversial Libertés de la France contre le pouvoir
arbitraire de l’excommunion, Amsterdam 1761. A lawyer by profession, Huerne de la
Mothe had put his name and career on the line by publishing a spirited defence of
personal liberty on behalf of Mademoiselle Clairon, an actress at the comédie française, in
which he argues against her excommunication by the Catholic Church. As a result of
his work, Huerne managed to escape being excommunicated himself, but he was
struck off the register of barristers, and the work was condemned to be burnt. He
turned his attentions to fiction, writing this and one other novel, L’enfantement de Jupiter,
ou la fille sans mère, Londres 1763, which was frequently reprinted under the title Histoire
nouvelle de Margot des Pelotons, ou la galanterie naturelle. It is no surprise, given his earlier
experience of publication, that both his novels were published anonymously and under
false ‘Londres’ imprints.
Provenance: with the arms of Diane-Adélaïde de Mailly, Duchesse de BrancasLauragais (1714-1769) on both covers. Diane-Adélaïde was the third of the famous de
Nesle sisters, four of whom (including her) were at some point mistress to Louis XV.
Her sister, the more famous Duchesse de Châteauroux, was the most influential and
longest-lasting mistress, before all the sisters were eclipsed by Madame de Pompadour.
Diane-Adélaide married, in 1742, Louis de Brancas, duc de Lauragais. She assembled
a vast and important library, principally of literature, much of which was purchased by
the Duc de La Vallière.
ESTC t222086, listing the Taylorian and All Souls College in Oxford, Bibliothèque
Mazarine and Yale only. OCLC adds Missouri and Toronto.
See Quentin-Bauchart, Les Femmes Bibliophiles de France, II, p. 439.
MMF 62.20; Cioranescu 34282.
‘to Censure generall Folly, under the dress of Novels’
43. HUTCHINSON, William (1732-1814).
AN INTRODUCTION [TO THE ATCHIEVEMENTS OF TIME].
1660 [ie 1760?].
Anno Dmni
MANUSCRIPT IN INK. small quarto, (193 x 142mm), pp. [xii], [ii] blank, 244 [ie 240,
misnumbered after p. 230 with one page corrected], the initial leaf marked ‘Vol I’ but no further
volume present (final page clearly marked ‘finis’), written in a neat hand throughout in brown ink,
occasional capitalisation or italicisation, section titles and numerous stylistic twirls, section of gothic
script on p. 137, in contemporary calf over marbled boards, the marbled paper torn at the corners, the
two lower corners rubbed, the leather gone and down to the inner board, spine simply ruled in gilt, red
morocco label lettered in gilt, with an early shelf mark label.
£8000 (+ vat)
A wonderful, apparently unpublished, manuscript It-Novel which has the person of
Time as its central character. It is highly reminiscent of Tristram Shandy, the first
volumes of which appeared in 1759. Digressive and naturally implausible, the novel
has many Sternean touches, both in the ludicrous narrative and its treatment, with
asides, diversions and satirical commentary, as well as the predominantly casual tone
and unusual textual presentation.
The full title of the novel, ‘An Introduction to the Atchievements of Time’ does not
appear until p. 14 of the text: ‘Tho’ this is an unusuall place, yet I hold it to be the
proper one to present you Madam with the Title page of this Book’. It is preceded by
a three page preface, a two-page list of ‘Persons’ (rather like a list of contents, with
page numbers) and ‘An Introduction’ (pp. 1-13), taking the reader into the text with:
‘But suffer me to introduce to you without further circumlocution -- A PERSONAGE
for whom to make Epithets and Apologys were greatly to derogate and affront -Madame I present - to you my good Friend -- TIME --. The Title page of a Book, like
the Curtain of a Playhouse, opens the Stage & entertains you with the scene of Action’
(p. 14). The first scene of action is entitled ‘A City in the Country’, a section
concluding with the marriage of Peter Glanville Esq and Miss Belinda Careless, a
marriage which the author greets as ‘one of the greatest Atchievements’ of ‘the old
Gentleman’ [Time]’s life: ‘that not a soul living I assure you, could have brought this
match about, but so sagacious and true a friend as Time himself’ (p. 23).
‘It is necessary for me to inform the Reader, that in the following Work, I have not
endeavoured to maintain the exact Progress of Vices in Real Life; or attempted the
Picture of Particular Characters, existing in the World -- my only intention was to
Censure generall Folly, under the dress of Novels; drawing them in the most
Ludicrous & Extravagent Colours ... This much I promise, that a reader might weary
his Mind in hunting for Similitudes, where I intend nothing but General Satire ... This
I must be persumptious enough to say, that there is not one incoherence in the Piece
as a Novel, which doth not imply something particular ... which the attentive reader
will discover happily, especially if he knows the Time and Place which forms the
scheme of the Piece’ (Preface, pp. vii-ix).
‘To please the WORLD is impossible! -The WORLD is a contradictious compound which
like Water and Oyl, divide the more, the more they
are agitated. If I was to write A THOUSAND
VOLUMES, I would not write them to the WORLD;
for the WORLD is the worst of Correspondents,
refractory, contradictory, abusive and absurd. --’
The attribution to William Hutchinson comes
from a similar manuscript in Durham University
Library. Hutchinson was a lawyer, topographer,
antiquary and writer who is best known for The
History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of
Durham, 1786-1794. He also wrote a number of
plays and some fiction, including The Hermitage, a
British Story, London 1772, a popular novel which
ran to three editions (’the very Hurlothrumbo of
Romance’ said Thomas Pearne in the Monthly
Review), A Week at a Cottage, a Pastoral Tale, London
1775 and The Doubtful Marriage, a Narrative drawn
from Characters in Real Life, London 1792 (’an
interesting and distressing tale’, Critical Review).
Gordon Goodwin in DNB also cites a ‘Romance’
after the manner of ‘The Castle of Otranto’ but we
have not managed to trace this.
See Durham University Library: Add.MS.1562.
44. JOHNSON, Samuel (1709-1784).
BOULARD, Antoine-Marie-Henri, (1754-1825), translator.
MORCEAUX CHOISIS DU RAMBLER, ou du Rodeur; Ouvrage dans le genre du
Spectateur, Traduit de l’Anglois de Johnson. Rue S.-André-des-Arcs, no. 27, chez J.-R.
Lottin de S.-Germain, Librairie-Imprimeur Ordinaire de la Ville. A Paris, 1785.
FIRST EDITION IN FRENCH. 12mo, (165 x 94mm), pp. viii, 405 [ie 505], [3], in
contemporary mottled calf, spine gilt, green morocco label lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers, red edges,
with the heraldic bookplate of ‘Desains Notaire à St. Quentin’.
£2000
The scarce first French edition of a selection of issues from Johnson’s Rambler.
Fleeman notes that a translation of Rambler 190 was published in ‘a French magazine’
in 1754, but this is the first selection of any significance to appear. This is a
completely different version to the complete translation published in four volumes in
the following year as Le Rodeur, Maestricht, Dufour and Roux, 1786. There seems to
have been something of a flurry of Johnson translations into French in the 1780s, with
two editions of Rasselas published, in Paris in 1787 and in Lausanne in 1788 , and a
translation of A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, which was published in French
in Geneva, 1785.
This edition has a very interesting translator’s preface in which he speaks of the
need for the study, ‘presque négligée en France’, of other living languages. He is now
offering these translations, which he made some years previously, for fear that he may
be beaten to the press by some other translator (’la crainte d’être prévenu par quelque
autre Traducteur’: presumably he has got wind of Maastricht edition) and also because
he is inspired by another recently published French translation of selections from the
English and believes that it is time to introduce the French public to these selections
from the Rambler. The translator uses the preface to express the hope that such a
publication as the Rambler could be printed in France: ‘Osons espérer qu’un projet si
utile aux progrès des Arts, & même au Commerce, sera exécuté sous le Régne de notre
Monarque, & qu’une société de Gens de Lettres nous donnera une continuation de ce
Journal étranger, qui a duré trop peu de temps, & qui seroit cependant nécessaire pour
nous faire connoître promptement les Découvertes & les bons Ouvrages des autres
Nations’ (pp. vii-viii).
The ‘chosen morcels’ amount to thirty-eight numbers or discourses, translated from
the eighth edition of the Rambler, London 1771. A table at the end of the volume
identifies which of the original English numbers these discourses relate to. The
translation is completely different to the larger scale translation of the following year.
To take one example: ‘Discours III’ of the present selection corresponds to No. XLVI
of the original Rambler, published on Saturday 25th August 1750 and beginning with
the quotation from Ovid, ‘Genus, & proavos, & quæ non fecimus ipsi, / Vix ea nostra
voco’. In Boulard’s translation the Ovid is given as: ‘Je ne puis regarder comme des
qualités personnelles la noblesse, l’illustration des ayeux, & tout ce qui ne vient pas
réellement de nous’ where the same quotation in the 1786 translation is given as ‘Je ne
tire vanité ni de ma naissance ni de mes ancêtres, mais de mes vertus & de la
réputation que j’ai acquise’. The two translations of the text continue to be wildly
different: Boulard beggining the section (under the title ‘Seconde Lettre d’Euphélie au
Rodeur, Sur l’éternité des haines en Province’, a title which is not given in the 1786
translation) ‘Monsieur, Puisque vous avez été assez sensible à mes plaintes pour les
publier, je suis portée par vanité & par reconnoissance à continuer notre
correspondance: d’ailleurs quand je n’aurois aucun de ces deux motifs, je serois
charmée de trouver une occasion de vous écrire, parce que je ne suis point
accoutumée à renfermer dans mon cœur rien de ce qui l’affecte, & que je n’ai ici
personne avec qui je puisse causer librement’ (p. 25). The translator of the 1786
version gives this as: ‘Monsieur, Puisque vous avez eu assez d’égard pour mes plaintes
pour les rendre publiques, je me sens inclinée, soit par vanité, soit par reconnoissance,
à continuer notre correspondance. J’aime naturellement à écrire, & je le ferois quand
même aucun de ces motifs ne m’y engageroit. Je n’aime point à garder ce qui me pese
sur le cœur, & je n’ai ici personne avec qui je puisse converser’ (I, 431-432).
Fleeman, J.D. Johnson, 50.3R/TF/S/2 (p. 313); Quérard, La France Littéraire, iv,
(1830), 229ff; Cioranescu 13437.
OCLC lists BN, Bodleian, Koninklijke, UCLA, Yale, Chicago and Harvard.
45. JOHNSON, Samuel (1709-1784).
LE RÔDEUR. Traduit de l’Anglois (du Rambler). Tome Premier [-Quatrième]. A
Maestricht, chez J.E. Dufour & Phil. Roux, Imprimeurs-Libraires, associés. 1786.
FIRST COMPLETE EDITION IN FRENCH. Four volumes, 12mo, (168 x 90mm), pp. [iv],
503; [iv], 475; [iv], 490; [iv], 396, in contemporary calf, colourfully mottled, spines gilt in
compartments with lyre vignette, green morocco labels lettered and numbered in gilt, marbled
endpapers, marbled edges, green silk markers.
£3000
A handsome copy of this very scarce complete text of Johnson’s Rambler in French,
including the complete run of 208 numbers, originally published between March 20th
1750 and March 17th, 1752. Elizabeth Carter wrote numbers 44 and 100, Samuel
Richardson wrote number 97 and Catherine Talbot wrote number 30. Parts of three
other volumes are thought to have been supplied by David Garrick and Joseph
Simpson but all the other volumes are assumed to be Johnson’s own work.
This is the first complete French translation, preceded by a single volume selection
published in the previous year under the title Morceaux choisis du ‘Rambler’ ou du Rôdeur,
Paris, Lottin, 1785 (see above). The translator of the earlier selection is AntoineMarie-Henri Boulard (1754-1825) but this is clearly a very different translation.
OCLC locates the BN copy only. A search of a dozen British and American library
catalogues reveals two more copies, one in the Donald and Mary Hyde collection at
Houghton and one at Yale.
Fleeman, J.D. Johnson, 50.3R/TF/1 .
‘a strange and wonderful novel that quickly disappeared without a trace’
46. KIMBER, Edward (1719-1769).
THE HISTORY OF THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF MR. ANDERSON.
Containing his strange Varieties of Fortune in Europe and America. Compiled from
his Own Papers. London: printed for W. Owen, at Homer’s-Head, near Temple-Bar,
1754.
FIRST EDITION. 12mo, (165 x 92mm), pp. [ii], 288, bound without the initial advertisment
leaf, bad tear on p. 109, with loss of margin, torn very close to text but with no actual textual loss,
quite heavy foxing throughout, a well-read copy with some gatherings loosening, in contemporary calf,
gilt filet border to covers, front joint weakening, spine ruled in compartments, brown morocco label
lettered in gilt, extremities worn, head and tail of spine chipped, front joint beginning to split at head
and foot, with the contemporary ownership inscription on the title page of ‘H. Wale’ and the later
booklabel of Matthew Kine.
£3000
The scarce first edition of one of Edward Kimber’s most fascinating novels and a key
text in the perception of slavery and America in mid-eighteenth century England.
Based on a tale that Kimber heard during his own travels in the American colonies
between 1742 and 1744, the novel is clearly influenced by his experiences there and
has a level of historical accuracy which sets it far above the many novels of the time
that attempt to tackle some of the same issues.
Kidnapped in England at the age of seven, the eponymous hero of the novel, Mr., or
Tom, Anderson, is transported to the colonies where he is sold to a ruthless Maryland
planter as a white slave. After enduring many years of captivity, during which he
meets and falls in love with Fanny, he eventually gains his freedom and becomes a
successful trader. Courageous as well as virtuous, Tom becomes a war hero and is
lauded as friend of slave, Indian, Quebecois and Englishman alike. Finally, he is
reunited with Fanny, they are married and return, happily, to England.
‘In the early 1750s Edward Kimber
completed The History of the Life and
Adventures of Mr. Anderson, a strange and
wonderful
novel
that
quickly
disappeared without a trace. The
problem was not a boring narrative. He
spun a complex tale of two young
lovers in Maryland who tried to defy the
conventions of a patriarchal Atlantic
world of the eighteenth century. Rather,
the problem was that Kimber dealt
openly with economic oppression and
human exploitation, imagining a violent
slave revolt against the great planters of
Virginia. One has to be reminded
constantly that this work appeared
many years before Abolitionists in
England and America effectively
challenged bondage. This book
provides a splendid introduction to the
violent complexity of Atlantic history’
(T.H. Breen, Northwestern University).
The novel enjoyed considerable
contemporary popularity, running to a
second edition as well as a Dublin
edition in the same year, both now even
scarcer than this first edition. A new
edition was published in Berwick in 1782 and this was reissued in Glasgow in 1799.
Recently, the novel has been attracting more attention and it has been republished by
Broadview Editions in 2008.
ESTC n17929, at BL, Columbia, Huntington, Newbery, Princeton, DLC, Penn,
Virginia and Yale.
Raven 241; Block p. 106.
on the reproduction of flowers
47. LA CROIX, Demetrius de.
CONNUBIA FLORUM Latino Carmine demonstrata. Auctore D. de la Croix, M.D.
Notas et Observationes adjecit Richardus Clayton, Baronettus. Bathoniae: ex.
typographia S. Hazard. 1791.
FIRST BATH PRINTING. 8vo, (222 x 130mm), pp. [iv], ix, [10]-138, [1] errata, with one
sepia-tinted engraved plate, by Hibbart of Bath, with the errata leaf at the end, in contemporary blue
straight-grained morocco, some surface wear to extremities, gilt double filet border with additional
inner gilt floral and star border, flat spine simply ruled in gilt in compartments, lettered in gilt, tooled
with a single floral stem, signed at the foot of the spine ‘Rel. P. Bozerian’, with pink silk endpapers
and greek key dentelles, pink silk doublures with a gilt roll tooled border, gilt edges.
£1800
A sumptuous copy of the most elegant edition of this poem, in a binding by Bozérian
Jeune. An eccentric as well as an elegant production, this highly romanticised Latin
poem on the ‘marriage of flowers’ was first published at the beginning of Sebastian
Vaillant’s Botanicon Parisiense in 1727. Written by a Irish physician, Demetrius
MacEnroe, who was living in Paris in the early part of the eighteenth century, it was
subsequently expanded and reprinted under the name of Demetrius de la Croix, a
French translation of the author's Irish name. The poem attracted the attention of
Bishop Atterbury, who sent copies to a number of his friends in England, notably
Pope and Swift, through whom the work attained a certain celebrity.
The poem celebrates the Borometz or Scythian Lamb, a staple of early cabinets of
curiosities, which was defined as ‘the shaggy rootstock of an Asiatic tree fern,
sometimes used as a styptic’. The poem itself takes up only 37 pages (pp. 21-58) of
the present edition; before it are guidelines and prefatory material, following it (pp. 59138) are the notes and obervations which were added for this edition by Sir Richard
Clayton. A miscellaneous writer and the translator of a number of titles from the
French, Clayton enriches his commentary with references to Ray, Linnaeus, Martyn,
Erasmus Darwin and even Gilpin. The notes, in no particular order, are in French,
Latin, Greek and English.
An interesting tangent that we came across while researching this book suggests that
J.K. Rowling may have known something of this French-resident Irishman. Harry
Potter has a schoolfriend named Demetrius de la Croix (Gerard Drake Matthias
Demetrius Delacroix, known as Drake). A pureblood with parents from Slytherin and
Griffindoor houses, he stands half way between good and evil. What was it about this
eccentric Irish-French physician, with his shaggy tree ferns and rootstocks, that
inspired her to use his name?
ESTC t81819, listing numerous copies in Europe and Cornell, Huntington, McMaster,
NY Botanical Garden, UC Berkeley, Delaware, Toronto and Yale.
48. LAMBERG, Maximilian Joseph, Graf von (ca. 1730-1792).
TABLETTES FANTASTIQUES ou Bibliothèque très particulière pour quelques païs
et pour quelques hommes. Par l’Auteur du Mémorial d’un Mondain ... aux dépens de
la Societé typographique, et se trouve dans la Librairie des Savants. A Dessau, 1782.
FIRST EDITION. 4to, pp. [iv], 172, folding engraved plate, text fairly browned throughout, in
rather tatty contemporary blue boards, extremities bumped, spine lettered in ink, remnants of paper
shelf mark labels on spine, paper chipped in lower section of spine, head and foot of spine worn away:
not the most attractive book externally.
£3500
A highly eccentric work by this German aristocrat, friend and correspondent of
Casanova. A miscellaneous writer, his works include Mémorial d’un mondain, Vienna
1774 (as mentioned on the title-page), Époques raisonnées sur la vie d’Albert de Haller,
Leipzig 1778 and Vanité de quelques unes de nos connoissances, Paris 1766. His
correspondence with Giacomo Casanova (with that of Pietro Zaguri) was published as
Mon Cher Casanova, Paris, Champion, 2008.
‘Fantasy jottings’, one might translate the title, ‘or a very special library for some
countries and some men’. It certainly reads like jottings, more like an personal
commonplace book for noting entertaining scribblings or like an entertainment plan
for a country house party, with dialogues, anecdotes, letters, intellectual games and
short essays. Parts of the work that stand out include ‘Musique - Sermon de Sterne’
(pp. 28-29) - and of all the English authors he might have mentioned, this is spot on ‘Le Raconteur’, a discussion of ‘esprits forts’, mentioning Horace, his wife, Jacques
Sadeur and the Abbé Coyer, and a section called ‘Theatre ambulant’ (pp. 11 -25,
although it is quite hard to see where the section ends) which discusses the unities of
action, time, place, interest and character.
The main part of the work (from p. 49 to p. 164) is divided into ‘Stations’ and
‘Days’, and is reminiscent of ‘Mornington Crescent’. Some of the sections are headed
with phrases, so for example, ‘Day One, Station Eight’ is headed: ‘Sacrifices humains.
Augures. Sorts’, while ‘Day Three, Station Two’ is headed simply ‘Peurs paniques’.
There are characters within these sections who take part in the dialogues. The lead
roles are Earle and Sergis, but there is also a supporting cast, sometimes ‘Moi’ and
sometimes bit-parts like ‘le Paysan’ or ‘le Ranconteur’. It is in this section that the
folding plate is placed, to accompany a discussion on booksellers, libraries and
universities. The plate folds out to reveal a table, with the explanation, ‘Mr. Diderot
dans sa lettre sur les Sourds et les Muets propose de décomposer pour ainsi dire un
homme et de considerer ce qu’il tient de chacun des sens qu’il possede. J’ai fait de ceci
une application à la Grammaire dans la table suivante’ (folding plate, bound at p. 98).
The final section in the book, following its own divisional title, is ‘Question sur une
Nouvelle Manière de Compter, ou Bustroph Numeral, dedié aux Arithméticiens
Modernes’, Paris, 1782, (pp. 165-172).
OCLC lists BN, Leipzig, Harvard, Duke and Randolph-Macon college only.
49. LE NOBLE DE TENNELIÈRE, Eustache (1643-1711).
ILDEGERTE, Reyne de Norvvége, ou l’Amour Magnanime. Première Nouvelle
Historique par M.D. *** chez Guillaume de Luyne, Libairie Juré, au Palais dans la Salle
des Merciers, à la Justice. A Paris, 1694.
FIRST EDITION. Two volumes in one, 12mo, (162 x 83mm), engraved frontispiece and pp. [xii],
124; 119, [1], wormhole in the upper margin of the last three pages, the lower margin of gatherings
H to L dampstained with slight gauge out of the edges, considerably dampstained and worn, numerous
pages creased, occasional small tears without loss, in contemporary dark speckled calf, spine gilt in
compartments, lettered in gilt, with the bookplate of the Vicomte de Noailles and the ownership
inscription of ‘le marquis de la Varenne’ on the title-page, with engraved plate and title page to the
first part only: collating as the Bibliothèque Nationale copy.
£650
The extremely scarce first edition of a hugely successful novel, a fictionalised account
of the life of a Norwegian queen. ‘Ce n’est ny une Fable ny un Roman que je vous
donne, c’est la vérité pure de l’Histoire à laquelle je n’ay eu la peine que d’ajoûter le
tissu de la narration, pour luy donner un air plus François qu’elle n’a dans les Histoires
du Danemark’ (Au Lecteur, p. viii). Published anonymously in this first edition; the
author’s name appeared on the title-page for the first time in the second edition of
1696.
The key to the book's success as a novel lies in the heroine herself, and in the
fascination born of her two personae: the fierce and indomitable warrior and the
ravishingly beautiful woman. It is an exciting book, with great battle scenes and
careful military negotiations, but it is also a simple and powerful love story. One
moment Ildegerte is putting off her armour at the end of a day's battle and the next
moment she is appearing sumptuously dressed at a council of war, as if she were at a
fashionable society drinks party; one moment she is leading troops into battle and the
next her tender heart is suffering in silence from unrequited love. Her wit is also equal
to her beauty and she does not scruple to give her opinion, expressing herself at all
times judiciously and to the great admiration of all around.
OCLC lists another edition of the same year, Histoire d’Ildegerte Reine de Danemark et
de Norwege, ou l’Amour Magnanime, printed at Amsterdam by de Lorme, located at
Heidelberg only. Thereafter a storm of editions appeared. It was first translated into
English as Ildegerte, Queen of Norway; or, Heroick Love: A Novel, written originally in French,
by the author of the Happy Slave and Translated into English by a Gentleman of Oxford, London,
1721. The Ildegerte story subsequently became very popular in England, especially
with Kotzebue's rendition of it later in the century, a translation of which was issued
by the Minerva Press in 1798.
OCLC lists the Bibliothèque Nationale copy only.
Cioranescu XVII 42546.
with distinctive red and green spine compartments
50. LESCONVEL, Pierre de (1650?-1722).
ANNE DE MONTMORENCY, Connétable de France. Nouvelle Historique. au
Palais; chez Jean Guignard, à l’entrée de la Grand’Salle, à l’image S. Jean. A Paris,
1697.
FIRST EDITION. 12mo, (157 x 85mm), pp. [iv], 428, in contemporary heraldic calf with the
arms of Gabriel-Paulin Prondre de Guermantes gilt on both covers, the spine gilt with floral tooling,
with alternate red and green morocco labels in each compartment.
£1500
Part fiction, part biography, this is a very handsome copy of a scarce historical novel
based on the life of one of the most remarkable French Renaissance figures, Anne de
Montmorency (1493-1567), friend of François I and Henri II. ‘Entre les grands
Hommes que la France a produit, il n’y en a guéres qui puissent, avec fondement, se
glorifier d’avoir des Ancêtres d’une aussi grand disctinction, que Anne de
Montmorency’, the text begins before starting to elaborate on the personal qualities
and excuse the galanteries of ‘nôtre héros’.
50. Lesconvel
Pierre de Lesconvel wrote a number of loosely biographical historical novels, often
about leading sixteenth century French figures. He also wrote straight fiction and
some short stories, Recueil de contes, Paris, 1698 as well as publishing historical studies
such as Nouvelle histoire de France depuis Pharamond jusqu’à présent, Paris 1698, a collection
of various historical writers. He is mostly remembered for his celebrated utopia, Idée
d’un règne doux et heureux, ou relation du voyage du prince de Montberaud dans l’isle de Naudely,
first published in Paris in 1703 and frequently reprinted.
Provenance: Gabriel-Paulin Prondre de Guermantes (1650-1723), strict
contemporary of the author, in a beautiful heraldic binding with his distinctive
alternate red and green compartments on the spine.
OCLC lists BN, Sainte-Geneviève, BL, Cambridge, Alberta and Princeton only.
Cioranescu XVII, 43063; Williams p. 255; Lever, La Fiction Narrative en prose en
XVIIème siècle, p. 66.
‘the supreme example of the horrific’
51. LEWIS, Matthew Gregory ( 1775-1818).
DESCHAMPS, Jacques-Marie (1750?-1826), translator.
DESPRES, Jean-Baptiste-Denis (1752-1832), translator.
BENOIST, Pierre Vincent (1758-1834), translator.
LAMARE, Pierre-Bernard de (1753-1809), translator.
LE MOINE, traduit de l’Anglois. Tome Premier [-Troisième]. chez Maradan,
Libraire, rue du Cimetière André-des-Arts, no. 9. A Paris, An V - 1797.
FIRST EDITION IN FRENCH. Three volumes, 12mo, (163 x 89mm), pp. [iv], 238; [iv], 263;
[iv], 292, tear to lower margin of I, 9, with loss of the word ‘il’ on the recto and the letter ‘s’ on the
verso, tear on II, 193, through text but with no loss, small paper fault on III, 75, touching two
words, various other small tears not affecting text, occasional dampstaining, the first couple of
gatherings of the first volume sprung, final leaf of third volume partially detached at the gutter, in
contemporary quarter calf over striped boards, vellum tips, spines simply ruled in gilt with brown
morocco labels lettered and numbered in gilt, the edges painted red and then gilt, numerous pages now
standing a little proud: a much read copy in an attractive, if modest, contemporary binding. £4500
A legendary rarity amongst French gothics, this is the true first French translation of
Monk Lewis’ masterpiece, the most lurid of all the early gothic novels. Written by the
nineteen year old Lewis in a matter of weeks, it caused a scandal on its publication and
spread like wildfire, both in England and on the Continent, particularly France and
Germany. The Monthly Review in England condemned the ‘vein of obscenity [which]
pervades and deforms the whole organization of this novel’ and the Critical Review
warned that parents would turn pale on seeing the book in the hands of a son or
daughter. Coleridge condemned the work for its ‘abominations’ and even Byron, not
usually faint-hearted, called his friend ‘a jaded voluptuary’ for this production.
‘An encyclopedia of all the Gothic impulses. With its potent intermixture of
satanism, supernaturalism, sexuality and sadism .... The Monk officially shocked and
secretly delighted all varieties of readers. Its repulsive situations, lewd vulgarity of
style, blasphemous rhapsodies, and erotic candour made it the first Gothic novel to be
considered indecent, infamous, and dangerous’ (Frank).
51. Lewis
Maradan followed this first French printing with a small format four volume edition
with illustrations, which appeared later in the same year. Six further editions are listed
by MMF by 1819. A second French version, by an unknown translator, was published
as Le Jacobin espagnol ou histoire du moine Ambrosio et de la belle Antonia, sa sœur, Paris, 1798.
This first French edition is not to be confused with the four volume 18mo edition of
the same year, which is often wrongly listed as the first edition and which, while not
particularly common (OCLC lists it at BN, BL, Leeds, Harvard, Michigan State,
Morgan and Vanderbilt) is very much less scarce than this genuine first.
MMF 97.45; Summers, A Gothic Bibliography, p. 423; Garside, Raven & Schöwerling
1796:63.
OCLC lists the Bibliothèque Nationale and Princeton only.
presented by the author; with separately bound Appendix
52. [LONDON AND WESTMINSTER LIGHT-HORSE VOLUNTEERS.]
THE LIGHT-HORSE DRILL: describing the several evolutions, in a progressive
series, from the first rudiments, to the manoeuvres of the Squadron and Regiment:
designed for the use of the Privates and Officers of the Volunteer Corps of Great
Britain. By a Private of the London and Westminster Light-Horse Volunteers. The
Third Edition. London: printed by March and Teape, Tower-Hill, and sold by
Egerton, Whitehall; Carpenter & Co., Old Bond Street; and Robinsons, Patenoster
Row. [1803.]
THIRD EDITION. Bound in two volumes, with the Appendix separate, 4to, (295 x 250mm),
engraved frontispiece and pp. [ii], vi, [ii], 37; [iv], 20, with twenty-four engraved plates in the first
volume and the four final engraved plates in the appendix volume, the plates numbered 1-28, tissue
guard after the frontispiece, uncut throughout, the plates printed on thick paper, the two volumes in
near-matching paper bindings, the main text in the original marbled boards, rebacked with buffcoloured paper, spine chipped particularly at head and foot, front hinge very weak and only just
holding, repaired at upper end; the appendix in near-matching original marbled wrappers with printed
label on the front cover, plain backstrip considerably worn; both volumes slightly shabby and dog-eared
but the text and plates clean, both front free endpapers inscribed ‘From the author’.
£900
A presentation copy of the scarce expanded third edition of this anonymous and
lavishly illustrated guide to cavalry manoeuvres, written by a private of the London
and Westminster Light-Horse Volunteers. First published in 1800 (OCLC lists
London Library, UCLA and Brown), there was a second edition in 1802 (OCLC at
V&A, NYPL and London). This is the first edition to contain the appendix, with its
extra four plates and twenty pages of
additional text. Printed separately for speed
and convenience, the catchword at the end of
the main text suggests that it was intended to
be bound in one volume, although the
attractive printed label on the front wrapper
of this copy’s Appendix volume suggests that
a fair number may have been issued in this
form. The twenty-eight numbered plates are
unsigned; the frontispiece is signed ‘Drawn
by G. Garrard, Associate of the Royal
Academy; Etched by T. Morris’.
‘The exertion made by the whole Kingdom,
in the present momentous crisis, in the
formation of the numerous Volunteer Corps,
has called on the Author of this treatise, for a
new edition of it, much earlier than he had
expected: and has obliged him to use all
possible expedition in the publication of it,
without waiting for the additions he had
prepared, and which will now be published in
the form of an appendix’ (Advertisement to
the Third Edition, dated October, 1803).
OCLC lists US Military Academy and Brown.
poetry, music and the Scottish peasantry
53. MACNEILL, Hector (1746-1818).
THE PASTORAL OR LYRIC MUSE OF SCOTLAND; in three Cantos. By Hector
MacNeill, Esq. Printed by George Ramsay and Company, for Archibald Constable and
Company, Edinburgh; and John Murray, London. Edinburgh: 1808.
FIRST EDITION. 4to, (282 x 210mm), pp. [viii], 68, uncut in the original drab boards, joints
cracking, original printed label on spine, darkened, spine partly chipped, wanting the headcaps. £300
An unsophisticated copy of MacNeill’s poem on the poetic genius of Scotland. An
unfortunate figure, MacNeill’s impecunious family situation forced him into an
adventurous sea-faring life wholly unsuited to his quiet, literary disposition. Time after
time he returned to his native Scotland and attempted to earn a living by his pen, but
his lack of reputation and connections in the world of letters made this impossible and
he was endlessly forced to return to sea and to seek employment in the West Indies,
much to the destruction of his health. The many adventures that he unwillingly fell
into are recounted with much verve in his autobiographical novel, Memoirs of the Life
and Travels of the late Charles MacPherson, Edinburgh 1800.
He is mostly remembered for his ballad, Scotland's Skaith, or the History of Will and Jean,
Edinburgh, 1795 which swiftly ran to fourteen editions and gained him a wide
reputation. He also wrote some excellent songs which were very popular, including
‘Mary of Castlecary’, ‘My boy, Tammie’, ‘Come under my plaidie’, ‘I lo'ed ne'er a
laddie but ane’, ‘Donald and Flora’ and ‘Dinna think, bonnie lassie’. He was less proud
of a political pamphlet, On the Treatment of the Negroes in Jamaica, written in defence of
slavery. Commissioned by a friend and composed out of dire financial necessity,
MacNeill later did his best to suppress it.
The present poem is an attempt to describe the influence of the ‘sister arts’ of poetry
and music on the Scottish peasantry through the ages. ‘By Music and Poetry is not
here meant such as are usually met with in polished and refined society, but that
species of simple melody and uncultivated song, which, without artificial ornament, or
fastidious correctness, touch the heart with genuine Nature, and awaken the feelings
of sympathy, affection and love’ (Advertisement, pp. v-vi).
Jackson, Annals, p. 321.
54. MALARMÉ, Charlotte de Bournon, Comtesse de (1753-ca. 1830).
RICHARD BODLEY ou la Prévoyance Malheureuse. Par Madame de Malarmé.
Premiere [-Seconde] Partie. chez Thomas Hookham’s. A Paris, chez la veuve
Duchesne, Libraire, rue Saint-Jacques, au-dessous de la Place Cambray. A Londres,
1785.
FIRST EDITION. Two volumes in one, 12mo, (162 x 92mm), pp. [ii], [3]-299; [ii], [3]-297, in
contemporary half speckled calf over orange speckled boards, spine brightly gilt in compartments, with
orange and blue morocco labels lettered in gilt, a couple of tiny scratches on the spine, otherwise
excellent.
£2250
A gorgeous copy of this very scarce epistolary fiction by the
prolific novelist and anglophile, Madame de Mallarmé.
Described as an ‘Intrigue sentimentale et mondaine’ in MMF,
the novel takes place in England and France and has a cast of
likely-sounding English characters, often charmingly
misspelt, as is often the case with this novelist. A glance at
the advertisements on the verso of the title-page shows how
the author, a member of the Académie des Arcades de Rome,
returns to an English setting time and again for her novels.
Four other titles by the same author are listed and they are all
similarly mock-English: Lettres de Milady Lindsay, ou l’Epouse
pacifique, 1780, Clarence Welldane [actually Welldone], ou le
pouvoir de la vertu, 1781, Anna Rose-Trée, 1783 and Histoire
d’Eugénie Bedfort, ou le Mariage cru impossible, 1784.
The novel opens as the hero, Richard Bodley, writes to his
sister, Miss Nancy, from Paris. At the start of his Grand
Tour, he laments having left home and questions the
necessity of his travels: ‘La nécessité de voyager est elle donc
indispensable pour un Jeune-homme de qualité? Walltree,
Sommercet, Harvey, ont-ils moins de mérite parce qu’ils n’ont
point parcouru l’Europe entiere? C’est l’opinion générale, je
le sais; mais ce n’est pas la mienne’ (p. 4). A number of other
Bodleys also take a part in the correspondence as well as
Sarra Fleming, Mistrees Horney, Henry Harvey, George
Burlington, Monsieur Jarvis, Fanny Ramcey, Le Chevalier
Hill and Sir Alworthy. Various short stories are narrated
within the text, such as ‘Histoire de Cécile de Roulange’ (I,
73-135) and ‘Histoire du Chevalier de Verceuil’ (I, 189-200).
ESTC t209740 lists Bodley (yup) and Brotherton Libraries
only. OCLC adds BN.
Cioranescu 41931; MMF 85.35.
55. MANNERS, Lady Catharine Rebecca, Baroness Hunting Tower (1766?1852).
REVIEW OF POETRY, Ancient and Modern. A Poem. By Lady M******. Printed
for J. Booth, 14, Duke Street, Portland Place. London: 1799.
FIRST EDITION. 4to, (280 x 220mm), pp. [iv], 30, uncut throughout, last leaf a little dust-
soiled, stitched as issued, extremities a little worn.
£350
A good, fresh copy in original condition, uncut and stitched as issued, of Lady
Manners' poem about the history of poetry, dedicated to her son. Originally from
Cork, Catherine Rebecca Grey came to live in England in 1790 on her marriage to
William Manners, later Lord Hunting Tower of Leicester. The nostalgic Irish
landscapes of her first volume of poetry, with its tales of lovers in Norman times,
brought her much popularity, earning her the compliment, ‘a most accomplished lady’,
in the Gentleman’s Magazine.
The present poem, Manners’ second and last publication, also received a favourable
review in the Gentleman’s Magazine, where she was praised for succinctly characterising
‘the thematic and moral concerns of poets from ‘matchless Homer’ to ‘enlightened
Johnson’. The extensive catalogue of ancient poets, including Pindar, Theocritus,
Lucretius, and Tasso, and English poets since Chaucer, reveals discerning intelligence
and wide reading. Poetry is enlisted to lead the way to moral truth; “Addison’s
enlighten’d page / Charmed while it reformed the age”; and “Piety’s seraphic flame /
Mark(s) enlighten’d Johnson’s name”’ (GM, August 1799).
ESTC t106175; Jackson p. 238.
56. MARESCOT, Michel (18th cent).
MAHULEM, Histoire Orientale. A la Haye. 1766.
[bound after:] BECCARIA, Cesare (1738-1794).
MORELLET, André (1727-1819), translator.
TRAITE DES DELITS ET DES PEINES, traduit de l’Italien, d’après la troisième
Edition, revue, corrigée et augmentée par l’Auteur. Avec des Additions de l’Auteur,
qui n’ont pas encore paru en Italien. A Lausanne. 1766.
FIRST EDITION; FIRST EDITION IN FRENCH. Two works in one volume, 12mo, (166 x
90mm), Beccaria: pp. xxxi, [1], 286; Marescot: pp. xvi, 198, in contemporary polished calf,
attractive gilt tooled border to the covers, front board lettered in gilt ‘Champbonin’, spine gilt in
compartments with remnant of old shelf mark label at the foot, black morocco label lettered in gilt
‘Recueil’ and with remnant of earlier tooling (D.C.?), with marbled endpapers, speckled edges and the
contemporary heraldic bookplate of de Champbonin.
£3000
A wonderful copy of the only edition of this very scarce oriental novel. Written in
imitation of the Thousand and One Nights, this was one of a handful of novels that was
mentioned in the Cabinet des Fées, but not reprinted. Related in the first person,
Mahulem takes place in a fantastical Eastern setting where anything, it seems, can
happen. As its central theme are the strange and wonderful adventures of Mahulem
and Felix, which are interspersed with numerous secondary tales. The novel opens on
Mahulem’s first adventure, where his dream of a garden in the sky is turned into a
reality by a genie, and he finds himself in a vast and magnificent garden suspended
between the heavens and the earth. This episode is followed by a visit to a palace of
diamonds and later to a strange subterranean chamber. Through each episode, the
novel remains broadly philosophical in tone, it is a novel of sensibility with more than
a dash of melancholy, part conte philosophique and part fairy tale.
‘L’histoire des erreurs d’un Philosophe serait, selon moi, le meilleur traité de
Philosophie qu’on pût avoir; & le tableau des insatiables desirs de Mahulem doit offrir
aux yeux de toute personne qui voudra réfléchir, le meilleur plan de modération qu’on
puisse exposer. L’énergie des situations, la morale sublime du puissant Génie qui les
permet, & les répare; le cahos des passions dont le dévelopement est si bien managé,
quelques peintures voluptueuses semées çà et là, comme de belles roses pour récréer
l’œil du voyageur’ (Préface, pp. x-xi).
This is the only novel to be attributed to Michel Marescot, who also published La
Folie du jour, ou la promenade des Boulevards, 1754 and La Brochure à la Mode, ornée et enrichie
de quelques pensées, Londres 1755.
Bound before the text is the first French edition of Beccaria’s Dei delitti e delle pene,
Livorno 1764, ‘one of the most influential books in the whole history of criminology'
(PMM). It was in this French edition, translated and edited by Morellet, that
Beccaria’s work gained recognition and wide-spread readership. 'Beccaria maintained
that the gravity of the crime should be measured by its injury to society and that the
penalties should be related to this. The prevention of crime he held to be of greater
importance than its punishment, and the certainty of punishment of greater effect than
its severity. He denounced the use of torture and secret judicial proceedings. He
opposed capital punishment, which should be replaced by life imprisonment; crimes
against property should be in the first place punished by fines, political crimes by
banishment; and the conditions in prisons should be radically improved. Beccaria
believed that the publication of criminal proceedings, verdicts and sentences, as well as
furthering general education, would help to prevent crime. These ideas have now
become so commonplace that it is difficult to appreciate their revolutionary impact at
the time. The success of
Beccaria's book was immediate,
six editions being published
within eighteen months, and it
was eventually translated into
twenty-two
languages.
Its
principles
have
been
incorporated into the criminal
practice
of
all
civilized
countries’ (PMM pp.125-6).
Provenance: from the library
of Louis François Toussaint du
Raget de Champbonin (17191792). The son of Madame de
Châtelet’s great friend, Anne
Paulin
du
Raget
de
Champbonin, Louis François
was well known to Voltaire,
who had hoped that his niece,
Marie Louise Mignot, would
marry him. He went into the
army, became Commissioner
for War and later Governor of
Vassy in Champagne. He was a
book collector of some
distinction. This copy bears his
name gilt on the front cover, as
well as his engraved heraldic
bookplate.
Marescot: OCLC lists BL,
University of Wales and
Harvard only; MMF 66.35;
Cioranescu 42562.
Beccaria: Cioranescu 47363;
Brunet I,729.
‘The world is now better disposed to do justice to living merit’
57. MARSHALL, of Epsom (fl. 1788).
CATALOGUE OF FIVE HUNDRED CELEBRATED AUTHORS of Great
Britain Now Living; the whole arranged in alphabetical order; and including a
complete list of their publications, with occasional strictures, and anecdotes of their
lives. London: printed for R. Faulder, New Bond-Street; J. Sewel, Cornhill; and B.
Law, Ave Mary-Lane. 1788.
FIRST EDITION. 8vo, (280 x 120mm), pp. viii, [284], title page loose at the gutter but holding,
the text from M onwards printed in a slightly smaller type, in contemporary quarter calf, plain spine
simply ruled in gilt, front joint cracking, extremities worn.
£650
A fascinating biographical dictionary of contemporary authors, of particular interest
today for its inclusion of minor literary figures. The author, ‘a gentleman named
Marshall, residing near Epsom, who afterwards bought up the copies and destroyed
them’ (Lowndes, p. 1368) was conscious of his own merit (and that of his anonymous
co-author?): ‘few individuals, we believe, would have been able by their single effort to
have brought together so great a quantity of materials’. Equally, Mr. Marshall is
confident in his condemnation of some of the authors included: ‘Andrews, Miles
Peter, author of [a farce and a comedy] which have taken their station in the regions of
mediocrity’; ‘Ayscough, Samuel, assistant librarian to the British Museum ...
Performances of this sort have their use, though they should happen, as in the present
instance, to be extremely incorrect’.
Authors included among the five
hundred include Joseph Banks, Anna
Letitia Barbauld, Joseph Barretti, Blower,
Eliza Blower, novelist, Frances Burney
‘author of two of the best novels in the
English language’, Robert Burns ‘a
ploughman in the county of Ayr in the
kingdom of Scotland’, Elizabeth Craven ‘a
person of extreme gaiety and vivacity in
private life, and who has successfully
transferred these qualities upon paper’,
madame d’Eon, ‘this very extraordinary
woman lived more than twenty years in a
public station, in the disguise and under
the character of a man’, William Godwin,
William Herschel, Thomas Holcroft,
Harriet and Sophia Lee , Hannah More,
Hester Lynch Piozzi, Clara Reeves, Anna
Seward, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Adam
Smith, Charlotte Smith and Helen Maria
Williams.
‘The world is now better disposed to do
justice to living merit. Some of the great
geniuses of the present day are revenged
before hand, by the idolatry of their
contemporaries, for the neglect they will
experience from posterity; and many,
whose pretensions are better founded, find even the cravings of their vanity satisfied
by the universal applause which they receive. It is an odd observation, that we are no
sooner interested by the writings of an author, than our curiosity is awakened for his
history, his fortune and his character’ (Preface).
ESTC t98190.
'how Paris looked, sounded, smelled, and felt
on the eve of the Revolution'
58. MERCIER, Louis Sebastien (1740-1814).
MON BONNET DE NUIT. Par M. Mercier ... Tome Premier [-Quatrième]. A
Neuchatel, de l'Imprimerie de la Société Typographique [Vol. II has ‘et se vend à
Versailles, chez Poinçot]. 1784 [vols III & IV: A Lausanne, chez Jean-Pierre Heubach
et Comp. 1785].
First Editions of the first two volumes; reprint of vols III -IV, same year, same imprint
as first edition. Four volumes, 8vo, (190 x 114mm), pp. [iv], 396; [iv], 423; [ii], 360; [ii], 346,
wanting the half-titles in the third and fourth volumes, occasional heavy browning in the last two
volumes, in contemporary mottled calf, central monogram gilt on all covers, spines gilt in
compartments, numbered in gilt, red morocco labels lettered in gilt.
£650
An attractive copy of one of Mercier's most important works, a collection of short
essays, some written in the form of dream sequences, and one or two 'contes'. Some
parts had previously been published in Mercier's Songes philosophiques, 1768, but this was
very much part of Mecier's distinctive style. 'He published prodigiously by recycling
passages from one book to another and stretching essays into multi-volume tracts.
His major works - L'An 2440, Tableau de Paris, and Mon Bonnet de Nuit - therefore have
a formless character. They are composed of short chapters on a wide variety of
subjects, which Mercier cobbled together without worrying about narrative coherence.
When a book caught on, he expanded it, cutting and pasting and fighting off pirates as
he advanced from one edition to the next. The result was never elegant, but it often
had a gripping quality, because Mercier knew how to observe the world around him
and to make it come alive in anecdotes and essays. There is no better writer to consult
if one wants to get some idea of how Paris looked, sounded, smelled, and felt on the
eve of the Revolution' (Darnton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers, 1996, p. 118).
The work is made up of two distinct parts. In the first edition, volumes III and IV
bear exactly the same imprint as the present edition but have a different pagination,
viz. pp. [iv], 390; [iv], 382. It was inordinately popular and many editions followed,
both in two and in four volumes. MMF lists a total of twenty-six editions. The final
two volumes were also published under the title, Mon Bonnet du Matin.
See Gay III 257, 'curieux receuil d'anecdotes pour servir à l'histoire du XVIII siècle'.
Cioranescu 44452, calling for two 1784 Neuchatel volumes only.
59. MITCHELL, Margaret, later Mrs. Ives HURRY (fl.1794-1808).
TALES OF INSTRUCTION and Amusement. Written for the use of Young
Persons. By Miss Mitchell. In two volumes. Vol. I [-II]. printed for E. Newbery,
Corner of St. Paul’s Church Yard. London: 1795.
FIRST EDITION. Two volumes, 12mo, (170 x 98mm), engraved frontispiece, signed Cook, Min
each volume and pp. viii, [ii], 215; [ii], 230, joints cracked, new labels, ‘Jane Sanderson’ gilt on the
front covers.
£2000
The scarce first appearance of a series of instructive short stories for children, hailed
by Mrs Trimmer as one of the ‘few books among the multitude that exist, which are so
proper to put into the hands of children’ (Guardian of Education, II, 149). This copy,
which suffers the addition of new labels and is a little weak along the joints, has a
suitable female provenance, with the name ‘Jane Sanderson’ gilt on the front cover of
each volume. The dedication and the preface, signed ‘Copford Hall, 5 Dec 1794’,
reveal Miss Mitchell as the governess of the two young daughters of the manor, about
to depart for school: ‘You are now entering on a more extensive plan of education,
you are mixing with a larger society; but do not in the public seminary forget the
private friend!’. Declaring herself ‘new to publication’, Miss Mitchell solicits ‘some
indulgence for this her first, and feeble effort’.
The twenty-six stories feature children and adults in some very different settings.
‘Advantages of Early Acquirements’, which demonstrates that a firm moral education
helps in times of adversity, contains some wonderful descriptions of Jamaica ‘where
the foot of European had seldom trod’ (I, 74); in ‘Insolence punished’, an old sailor
describes some of the most telling experiences of his travels around the world, from
the idealised community in India, that welcomed him after a shipwreck, to the
oppression and cruelty he witnessed in Buenos Ayres, where he met a young Indian
mother in great misery, who told of her being sold into slavery when ‘the thunder of
the white men was heard in our country’ (II, 42). Another of the stories describes a
social experiment where Adelaide, a spoilt little rich-girl, jealous of the happiness of
the peasant girls, resolves to stay with them so that she, too, can be happy. ‘She no
longer inhabited spacious rooms, nor saw plenty and elegance cover the table ... the
rooms were small, and the beds without curtains’. She tries to work alongside them
but is soon exhausted and weeping. On returning to her mother she has discovered
that it is her temper alone that has made her unhappy and she resolves to try and
change it. ‘The Generous Indian’ tells of a noble Mexican warrior, Omli, who in
sparing the life of a young American boy, defied his vengeful father. ‘Omli possessed
a mind more enlightened; he felt for the wrongs of his country, but he justly
considered that the crimes of others could never justify his own. “Because,” said he,
“Europeans have desolated our country, and have shewn themselves robbers and
assassins, shall we become murderers?”’. The scene of the American boy’s release is
depicted in the frontispiece of the second volume.
‘The lessons of disinterested benevolence, fortitude and humility, and prudence,
contained in these “Tales of Instruction”, - though, from their appropriate simplicity
of diction, peculiarly well adapted to the tender minds of the young, - may be studied
with advantage by those who have attained a more advanced period of life’ (Critical
Review).
Margaret Mitchell went on to publish Poems by M. Mitchell, Yarmouth, 1796, The
Faithful Contrast: or, Virtue and Vice accurately delineated, in a series of moral and instructive
tales, London, J. Harris, 1804, Rational Amusement, London, J. Harris, 1804 and a threevolume collection of short stories, Artless Tales, published under the name Mrs Hurry,
in 1808. It has also been suggested that she was the author of a three-volume novel,
Donald, London, 1806. She married Ives Hurry, who founded a club for British Naval
prisoners of war at Verdun in 1805. A single volume Dublin edition of the present
work was published later the same year (ESTC t117969, held at the British Library
only) and it was thought popular enough to be reissued in 1807 by John Harris, who
had taken over Elizabeth Newbery’s business in 1801.
ESTC t103373, listing half a dozen copies in the UK and Library Company of
Philadelphia, Rice, UCLA, Florida, Illinois and Yale.
Garside, Raven & Schöwerling, Appendix A:8; Roscoe J184.
60. MORE, Hannah (1745-1833).
SIR ELDRED OF THE BOWER, and the Bleeding Rock: two legendary tales. By
Miss Hannah More. printed for T. Cadell, in the Strand. London: 1776.
FIRST EDITION. 4to, (262 x204mm), pp. [vi], 49, [1], bound with seven other quarto poems, as
below, in contemporary half calf over marbled boards, vellum tips, rather worn but sound, red morocco
label lettered in gilt.
£750
A volume of eight quarto poems bound together in contemporary half calf and
labelled ‘Poems’. The boards slightly scuffed but this is still an attractive volume of an
interesting selection of poems containing, in addition to the Hannah More, the
following poems:
(ii) George Nelthorpe’s scarce poem Julia to Pollio. Upon his leaving her abroad. Written
some years ago and now first publish’d from the original manuscript, London 1770, pp. 32
(ESTC t125902, at BL, Cambridge, Leeds, Bodley & McMaster, New York, Chicago,
Cincinatti and Rochester).
(iii) George Crabbe (1754-1832). The Village, London 1783. FIRST EDITION, pp.
[iv], 38, with the half-title (ESTC t481).
(iv) Edmund Cartwright (1743-1823). Armine and Elvira, a legendary tale, London 1777,
the sixth edition, bound without the half-title, pp. 40 (ESTC t133058).
(v) Thoms Percy (1729-1811). The Hermit of Warkworth, a Northumberland ballad, in three
fits or cantos, 1782, ‘a new edition with additions’, pp. [viii], 56, with the half-title (ESTC
n17616).
(vi) Thomas Hull (1728-1808). Richard Plantagenet: a legendary tale, London 1774, ‘the
fourth edition, corrected and improved’, with the half-title which reads ‘the fourth
edition, corrected and enlarged’, pp. [ii], iv, 30 (ESTC t171169, at Birmingham and
NLS only).
(vii) Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774). The Deserted Village, London 1783, tenth edition,
pp. vii, [i], 23, [1], with the half-title (ESTC t146054); Roscoe A191 (3).
(viii) Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774). The Traveller, a poem, London 1778, tenth edition,
pp. 31, [1], with the half-title, title-page engraved (ESTC t146166); Roscoe A199 (15).
ESTC t48321.
61. NICHOLSON, Mr.
THE VILLAGE OF MARTINDALE; A Novel. printed for C. and F. Walther.
Dresden, 1789.
FIRST DRESDEN EDITION. 8vo, (162 x 96mm), engraved frontispiece printed in brown and
pp. [vi], 224, small marginal wormhole in last three leaves, in contemporary quarter calf over
distinctive brown and grey mottled boards, spine gilt in compartments with orange morocco label
lettered in gilt, red edges, from the library of Baron von Poellnitz, with his discrete ownership mark on
the title-page.
£2250
A wonderful copy in a contemporary German binding, in exceptional condition, of a
scarce historical novel. According to Blakey, the authorial attribution to Mr.
Nicholson comes from a Minerva Library Catalogue of 1814. Mr. Nicolson wrote
three other novels, all for the Minerva Press: Catherine, or the Wood of Llewellyn, 1788,
Orlando and Seraphina, a Turkish Story, 1787 and The Solitary Castle, a romance of the
eighteenth century, 1789. This is a scarce German edition, printed in English. With the
same frontispiece as in the original edition, but in this case distinctively printed in
brown ink (but without the caption ‘A Gentleman almost immediately burst through
the enclosure’). The novel had been advertised in the London Evening-Post: ‘Neatly
printed on fine paper, and adorned with an elegant Frontispiece, depicting a
remarkable Part of the story’ (LEP, March 1787). An entertaining novel, featuring
nuns and pilgrims, scholars and soldiers, dinners and elopements and a slightly
unexpected ‘Epitaph on a Balloonist’ (pp. 141-142).
‘The object of the following Narrative is, to present a variety of characters, in
common life in such singular and striking situations, as may have the effect of
alternately amusing and interesting the Reader; while, at the same time, all of them are
made, more or less, subservient to the general design and ground-work of the piece.
A few of these characters, unless the Author be much mistaken, are, at least in their
leading features, entirely new: New - not in life and general manners; for there they
abound: - but new in historical fiction’ (Introduction, p. iii).
The novel was well-received in England, with favourable notices in the press. ‘The
author promised us novelty’, said the Critical Review, ‘and he has not disappointed us ...
The story is conducted with skill: were were interested in the progress, and pleased
with the conclusion’ (CR, May 1787). Andrew Becket, in the Monthly Review, had this
to say: ‘This gentleman’s talent is indisputably the humorous and burlesque; as he has here
manifested in a very lively and agreeable tale’ (MR, June 1787).
This is one of only two known English language editions and follows the Minerva
Press original of 1787 (Blakey, p. 142). Both editions are very scarce, with ESTC
(t174926) listing the first edition at BL, Cambridge, Bodleian, National Trust;
McMaster, Princeton, Illinois and Penn. This edition does not include the dedication
to the Duchess of Portland but it does include the two-page author’s introduction.
The novel obviously went down well with the German public, as a translation into
German followed a few years later, Das Dorf Martinsthal, eine historische Novelle, Leipzig
1797.
.
Garside, Raven & Schöwerling 1787:46; see Block p. 173; Blakey, p. 142.
ESTC n64697, at Bancroft, Virginia and Yale only
62. PAGES, S.
FABLES NOUVELLES, divisées en six livres. Par S. Pagès, de Carcassonne. A
Carcassonne, chez R. Heirisson et G. Gareng. An VI de la République [1796].
FIRST EDITION. 12mo, (155 x 94), pp. [iv], 192, 6 table of contents, some light foxing, uncut
throughout in contemporary blue-grey wrappers, faded, spine almost entirely missing, a tatty but
unsophisticated copy.
£700
A scarce Carcassonne printed book of fables by an obscure French author named
Pages. Divided into six books, the collection contains a total of 109 fables on a fairly
traditional range of subjects. Dedicated to ‘La Jeunesse’, with an initial advertisement
in which the author writes that his desire in publishing the fables was to bring pleasure
to young people and to lead them to appreciate the moral.
‘Après tant d’excellens auteurs qui ont fait des Fables, on me trouvera peut-être
téméraire de livrer au public celles que j’ai composés. Que faire? J’ai cédé au petit
démon qui me les a inspirées; je lui cède encore aujourd’hui, en les rendant publiques.
La lecteur sera bien plus étonné, lorsqu’il saura que tous les sujets sont de mon
invention’ (Avertissement, p. iii).
OCLC lists Koninklijke and Princeton only.
from the library of the Prince de Soubise
63. PAJON, Henri (d. 1776).
HISTOIRE DU PRINCE SOLY, surnommé Prenany, et de la Princesse Feslée.
Première [-Seconde] Partie. A Amsterdam, aux dépens de la Compagnie. 1740
[Volume II:’1760’].
FIRST EDITION. Two parts in one volume, 12mo, (157 x 90mm), pp. [ii], xi, [i], 138, [2];
[ii], 129, [1], [2], title pages printed in red and black, in a contemporary heraldic binding, smooth
calf, some discolouration on covers and very slight cracking on front joint, spine gilt in compartments
with lozenge and coronet tooling, spine lettered and numbered in gilt, marbled endpapers with
bookplate removed, red edges and green silk marker, bookplate apparently removed, with a
manuscript shelf-mark on the front endpaper ‘ch h 2e tab h no. 46’ (chambre haute, 2ème tablette,
no. 46?) and in a later hand in red ink, ‘Exemplaire ayant fait partie de la riche bibliothèque du
prince de Soubise, dont il porte les pièces de son blason frappées en or sur le dos du volume’. £2200
A wonderful copy of the scarce first edition of this popular satirical fairy tale, or ‘conte
anti-conte’. Reminiscent of the contes or fairy tales of Anthony Hamilton, Pajon’s short
novel is a humorous and lively blend of the comical and realistic with the fantastical.
Walter Scott had a copy of the Histoire du Prince Soly in his library at Abbotsford and
had obviously read it. In his introduction to The Abbot, Scott mentions Pajon’s work
while explaining a literary device he uses in his own novel: ‘A pleasing French writer of
fairly tales, Monsieur Henri Pajon, author of the History of Prince Soly, has set a
diverting example of the same machinery, where he introduces the presiding Genius of
the land of Romance conversing with one of the personages of the tale’ (Waverley
Novels, Edinburgh 1870, Vol. 11, p. 4).
A hugely popular work, Histoire du prince Soly was reprinted in Garnier’s Voyages
imaginaires, 1787 (v. 25) and was many times separately printed. Editions followed in
1746, 1788, 1988 and there were translations into German, published in Copenhagen
in 1748, into Russian, Moscow 1761 and, more recently, into Spanish in 1987.
Tchemerzine attributes this title to Crébillon.
Provenance: Charles de Rohan, Prince de Soubise, nephew of Cardinal de Rohan. His
library, which included books inherited via his uncle from de Thou, was sold in 1789.
‘The world knows him as the inventor of a sauce and as the general in one lost battle;
but he had a higher fame among the booksellers for his prowess in the auction-room.
He seems to have been the victim of a frenzy for books. He impressed them by
crowds, and marshalled them in regiments and myriads. They fell in 1789 before the
hammer of the auctioneer ... Dibdin has described the catalogue ... it is a mark of the
changes in book-collecting that Dibdin praised the index as excellent, ‘enabling us to
discover any work of which we may be in want’; but it is now regarded as remarkable
for its poverty, and especially for the extraordinary carelessness that left eight noble
specimens from Grolier’s library without the slightest mark of distinction’ (Charles
Isaac & Mary Augusta Elton, The Great Bookcollectors, p. 85).
OCLC lists BN, Leeds, Toronto, UCLA, Yale and Monash.
Cioranescu 48729.
64. PEACOCK, James (1738-1814).
OIKIDIA, or, Nutshells: being Ichnographic Distributions for Small Villas; chiefly
upon oeconomical principles. In seven classes. With occasional remarks. By Jose
Mac Packe, a Bricklayer’s Labourer. Part the first, containing Twelve Designs.
London: printed for the Author, and sold by C. Dilly, in the Poultry. 1785.
FIRST EDITION. 8vo, (212 x 121mm), two engraved frontispieces and pp. [iv], 89, with
numerous tables in the text and twenty-five engraved plates, each facing its description, the text proper
being in the appendix, beginning at p. 51, plate xviii misnumbered xvii, in contemporary calf, red
morocco label on spine lettered in gilt, spine ruled in gilt, foot of spine chipped, joints cracking, but
generally an attractive copy, with the early ownership inscription of James McDouall of Lagan. £650
A charming book written as a guide to the ordinary person wishing to build a house in
the country. Peacock had worked as principal assistant to the architect George Dance
and as Clerk of Works to the City of London Corporation and therefore had
considerable experience, belying the anagrammatic pseudonym ‘Jose Mac Packe’, a
‘bricklayer’s assistant’, as given on the title page. He fears that some might suspect this
and reassures them as to his station in life, expressing the hope that ‘the sourest critic
will upon the whole allow, that he has acquitted himself as well as might be expected
for a Bricklayer’s Labourer’ (Preface). The twenty-five plates give plans of examples
with comments and detailed measurements, showing Peacock’s skill with relatively
small sites. The appendix (which, written under the guise of bricklayer, includes some
advice on how to deal with your architect) is a humorous guide for the layman on how
to build his own house: ‘let him procure a design upon paper, of a new House ...
whether it be from some Fan-painter, Toy-man, Lace-man, Paper-hanger, or
Undertaker ... if it happens to be the production of a wonderful genius, not of the
profession, it will not be unwise in him to consult some clumsy mechanic, or other,
who can readily distinguish a brick from a pantile’ (pp. 53-54).
Eileen Harris, British Architectural Books and Writers 1556–1785, 694; Berlin Katalog
2295.
ESTC t42147.
65. PECHMEJA, Jean (1741-1785)
TÉLEPHE EN XII LIVRES.
Augustins. A Londres; 1784.
et se trouve à Paris, chez Pissot, Libraire, Quai des
FIRST EDITION. 8vo, (197 x 118mm), pp. [vi], 264, woodcut vignette on title-page,
in
contemporary red boards textured in imitation of morocco leather, double filet gilt on covers, flat spine
simply ruled, decorated and lettered in gilt.
£850
An attractive copy of Pechejma's best-selling socialist utopian novel, frequently
reprinted and translated into English and German. Based in Minoan Crete and written
as an imitation of Télémaque, Pechejma's roman philosophique features a young
enlightened prince, Télephe, the son of Hercules, who views society according to his
philosophical principles. Inequality is condemned in his society, as is private property
and slavery. The queen, enamoured by Télephe, abdicates and herself installs
democracy, at the same time distributing land amongst former slaves. In effect, the
novel recounts the reconciliation of the oppressor and the oppressed, all through the
efficacy of philosophy.
ESTC t132203, listing the British Library, Cambridge, Brotherton, Göttingen,
Bibliothèque Mazarine, Harvard, Duke and Monash. OCLC adds Yale, Chicago,
Johns Hopkins and NYPL.
Cioranescu 49293; Hartig p. 68; MMF 84.52.
the trouble with university …
66. PENTON, Stephen (1639-1706).
THE GUARDIAN’S INSTRUCTION, or, The Gentleman’s Romance: Written for
the Diversion and Service of the Gentry. London, printed for the Authour, and sold
by Simon Miller, at the Star, near the West-end of St. Paul’s, 1688.
FIRST EDITION. 8vo, (157 x 85mm), pp. [xvi], 90, [2], in contemporary dark mottled calf,
covers with blind double fillet border, blind ornaments in corners, plain spine with raised bands,
discreet blind tooling, paper shelf-mark labels, the Macclesfield copy, with blind stamps, shelf marks
and the South Library bookplate.
£3500
An excellent copy of this scarce and wonderfully entertaining novel about life at
Oxford University in the seventeenth century, written by a fellow of the university.
Born in Winchester and educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford,
Penton spent most of his adult life in Oxford. There was a brief spell during which he
was rector of Tingewick, near Buckingham, a living in the gift of his college, during
which time he served as chaplain to the Earl of Ailesbury. In 1675 he returned to
Oxford, having been appointed principal of St. Edmund Hall. During his period in
office he built the chapel, which was consecrated on 7th April 1682, and the adjoining
library. His personal collection of books was given to the Bodleian in 1702.
The Guardian’s Instructor, or, the Gentleman’s Romance deals with the bringing up of
children at home and of their education at the University of Oxford. Written in reply
to a challenge from his nephew, ‘a severe Enemy of the University of Oxford’, the
‘Guardian’ explains his own softening of opinion towards ‘that Idle, Ignorant, Ill-bred,
Debauch’d, Popish University of Oxford’ (p. 2 and p. 18). His own dislike of the
university started as an undergraduate, when his tutor, a renowned philosopher,
thought himself too grand to teach and left him to all the temptations of idleness. His
resentment grew so much ‘that when I came to have Children, I did almost swear
them in their Childhood never to be friends with Oxford’ (p. 20). He therefore sent
his eldest son travelling, instead of to Oxford, and was at first quite pleased with the
results, but soon the lack of education began to show itself and he had no interest but
for sport, his dogs and bad company. Now his father bitterly regrets sending him to a
‘mean school’, which his wife persuaded him to, arguing against his growing up to fast
and learning ‘ill tricks’ at a great school, though in effect all she wanted was to have
her son near her. ‘And perhaps hereafter you may find it a very hard matter, not to be
guided by a Wife in the breeding your Children. For that Fondness which is a just
debt from all to a Wife, and is in some by Nature excessive, if she be cunning enough
to humour it well with a few Tears or a pretended Fit, will melt your sweet
Disposition. Mistake me not, I speak this onely by way of Caution, that when you
marry and grow fond, you may manage your uxoriousness more warily than I have
done, for your own Credit and the good of your Children’ (p. 28).
The Guardian resolves to take a firmer hand with his second son. ‘But what course
to take I was at a loss. Cambridge was so far off, I could not have any Eye upon him,
Oxford I was angry with’ (pp. 34-35). He consults a learned neighbour for whom he
has much respect, is encouraged to give Oxford
a second chance and is given a letter of
introduction to a tutor. He arrives with son,
wife and daughters (‘[that ] great Improvidence
of the Gentry, who when they come to enter a
Son ... bring Wife and Daughters to shew them
the University; there’s mighty Feasting and
Drinking for a week, every Tavern examin’d,
and all this with the company of a Child,
forsooth, sent up hither for Sobriety and
Industry’ (p. 80). The tutor, a forthright fellow
- ‘I believe, (generally) an honest Tutour sells his
hours cheaper than the Fencer or Dancingmaster will’ (p. 49) - agrees to take the boy on,
and explains lists his rules, which cover subjects
such as riots in public houses, no visits home in
the first year, no drunkenness, no debts, pocket
money to be paid through him for the first year,
dangers of cards and dice, &c. &c. The
Guardian is much impressed with him, agrees to
dine with him without the family (and is much
impressed by the lavishness of the dinner on
such small income) and asked him for his advice
on the education of children. This is presented
in under a separate heading, ‘General Directions
for the better Education of a Child of Great
Quality’, contains thirty-four sections and runs
from p. 65 to p. 79.
‘It was very Comical to hear the differing
apprehensions I and the rest of the Company
had of this Discourse. For the Women long’d
to go and see the College and the Tutour. And
when he was gone out of the Room, I asked how they liked the Person and his
Converse: My Boy clung about his Mother, and cry’d to go Home again; And she had
no more wit than to be of the same mind, she thought him too weakly to undergo so
much Hardship as she foresaw was to be expected. My Daughters (who instead of
Catechism and Lady’s-Calling) had been used to reade nothing but Speeches in
Romances, and hearing nothing of Love and Honour in all the Talk, fell into
downright scolding at him: call’d him the Merest Scholar: and if this were your Oxford
Breeding, they had rather he should go to Constantinople to learn Manners’(pp. 6263).
A companion volume was published in 1694 under the title New Instructions to the
Guardian, with a method of institution from Three years of age to Twenty-one. The latter work is
dedicated to Charles, Lord Bruce, son of the Earl of Ailesbury. ‘Dr. Knight, in his
‘Life of Dean Colet’ (p. 145), notes the condescension of Penton, ‘a very worthy and
noted man, who not only publish’d the “Guardian’s Instruction for Youth”, but (even
laterly) a “Hornbook” (or A.B.C.) for Children’’ (DNB).
ETSC r20604, issue with colon following ‘romance’ on title-page, listing several
copies in the UK and Louisiana State, Toronto, Yale, Clark, Huntington, Folger,
Newberry, Illinois, Harvard and the Library Company in North America.
Wing P1439.
67. PHILPOT, Stephen.
AN ESSAY ON THE ADVANTAGE OF A POLITE EDUCATION joined with a
learned one. London: printed for the Author; and sold by W. Russel, at Horace’s
Head, without Temple-Bar. 1747.
FIRST EDITION. 8vo, (196 x 115mm), pp. xvi, 116, printed on thick paper, occasional light
staining, in contemporary red morocco, ornate gilt borders with central lozenge, spine with raised
bands, gilt, in six compartments, green morocco label lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers, gilt edges,
some light staining to covers but an excellent copy, with the Nash Mason heraldic bookplate and later
booklabels of John Hely-Hutchinson, dated 1946, and John Lawson.
£4000
Sole edition of the only published work by Stephen Philpot, a dancing master of some
twenty years’ experience from Lewes in Sussex. Intended as a general treatise on the
education of children, Philpot’s remarks relate as much to girls as to boys and include
advice to parents, particularly mothers, in guiding their children’s education.
Dedicated to the Duchess of Somerset, whose children were amongst his pupils,
Philpot’s theories are evidently based on close observation of children.
‘Among those Aukwardnesses before mentioned, which are necessary to be
corrected, there is no greater Hindrance to the Improvement of most of the Children
in the Country, than that excessive Bashfulness which is so prevalent amongst them ...
why they do not hold up their Heads, keep themselves upright, walk so, look at People
who speak to them, or pay them a Compliment; and not turn their Heads another way,
or look upon the Ground?’ (p. 28).
In addition to his more general observations on the importance of a carefully guided
education, Philpot writes at length on the essentials of good manners, of correct
behaviour between the ranks of society and the obligations of good breeding. Two
sections are included on dancing: ‘Awkwardness to be corrected in Children before
they learn the steps of Dancing’ (p. 28) and the final part, ‘A Dissertation on the
Regulation of the Art of Dancing’ (p. 88-115). In this separate last section Philpot,
67. Philpot
quoting John Weaver and other authorities, calls for a regulation of the teaching of
dance which would codify the steps of dances such as the minuet, the rigadoon and
the louvre, as well as protecting the public from incompetent dance masters,
particularly French ones.
‘’Tis undoubtedly true, that we are greatly obliged to the French for many
Improvements in Dancing, and that there are a great many good Masters amongst
them; but every Frenchman that can “hop, caper, tumble, twirl, turn round, and jump
over their Heads, and in a Word, play a thousand Pranks ... may not be properly
qualify’d to teach that genteel Part of Dancing, that should recommend a Gentleman.”
I have known Scholars that have changed a very good Master to learn of a Monsieur,
who has not only made them Dance very badly, but given them many ridiculous Airs
par dessus la Marchée’ (p. 89).
This is a handsome copy bound in red morocco with elaborate tooling, possibly for
presentation. Interestingly, the binding is similar to a copy offered for sale by RulonMiller, although the actual tools used seem to be different. It would be interesting to
see if any of the other known copies are in such elegant bindings, or whether perhaps
just these two copies were bound, perhaps by different binders, for presentation by
the author.
ESTC t70157, listing ten copies in England and Columbia, Huntington, Library
Company, McMaster, Newberry, Watkinson Library, Clark, Illinois, Missouri and the
University of Western Ontario.
68. [PHYSICAL DICTIONARY.]
A PHYSICAL DICTIONARY: or, an interpretation of such crabbed words and
terms of arts, as are deriv’d from the Greek or Latin, and used in physick, anatomy,
chirurgery, and chymistry. With a definition of most diseases incident to the body of
man; and a description of the marks and characters used by doctors in their receipts.
This dictionary will be as useful and sufficient to all our late English practitioners in
physick or chirurgery (especially such as are not scholars) as any dictionary of ten
shillings price. Approved by several doctors, surgeons and apothecaries: and
recommended by them in an epistle to all English practitioners in physick and
chirurgery. printed by G. D. for John Garfield, and are to be sold at his shop at the
sign of the Rolling-Press for Pictures, near the Royal Exchange in Corn-hil, over
against Popes-head-alley, London: 1657.
FIRST SEPARATE EDITION. 12mo, (136 x 85mm), pp. [217], [2] advertisements, [1] blank,
the initial and terminal blanks, A8 and O8, present, the latter used as rear pastedown, title within
typographical border, woodcut head- and tail-pieces and initials, in contemporary sheep, rubbed, flat
spine, later gilt tooling, red sprinkled edges, with the early ownership inscription of John Gilbert on the
front free endpaper, prescription written on rear pastedown, the Macclesfield copy with embossed blind
stamp on the first few leaves.
£7500
This is the earliest separately published English medical dictionary, and only the
second medical dictionary in English. It was compiled ‘by able persons’, as Garfield
explains in ‘The Stationer to his Countrymen’ (p. ix-ii), to accompany Richard
Tomlinson’s translation of Renou’s Dispensatorium medicum, published by John
Garfield in 1657. This was a folio and Garfield evidently saw a market for this small
format separate edition. It seems likely that Garfield was the same John Garfield who
was imprisoned after the Restoration for writing an obscene newsbook, The wandring
whore, 1660, and if so, it rather explains
the lack of a reprint, as well as the fact
that Garfield’s output dried up
completely after this date.
According to Alston the first English
medical dictionary is that included in
Riviere’s Practice of physick (1655),
from which he states that Garfield’s
dictionary is derived (Alston XVII, 246).
But the present work is not derived
from the Riviere glossary, it is an
independent work with longer entries.
As for separately issued dictionaries, the
translation of Blankaart’s dictionary of
1684 is probably the next, wrongly
described by Garrison–Morton as the
first medical dictionary to be printed in
the British Isles (G–M 6797).
John Garfield was only active as a
stationer, and perhaps also as a printer,
for a short time, issuing very few books
from 1656–1659, from premises near
the Royal Exchange ‘at the sign of the
Rolling-Press for pictures’, or in some
imprints
‘the
Printing-press
for
Pictures’. In one of his books, George
Thornley’s Daphnis and Chloe (1657) the title page bears an engraving of three men at
work at a rolling press. Since Garfield is not known as a publisher of illustrated books,
it seems likely that this was formerly the shop of a copperplate printer.
ESTC r34553 locates copies at Cambridge, Oxford, Reading and the Wellcome
Library in the UK; and in North America at Rochester and Toronto only.
Wing P2143.
69. PICHON, Thomas Jean (1731-1812).
LA PHYSIQUE DE L’HISTOIRE ou Considérations générales sur les Principes
élémentaires du temperament et du Caractère naturel des Peuples. A la Haye, et se
trouve à Paris chez Vente Libraire au bas de la Montagne Ste. Genevieve près les RR.
PP. Carmes. 1765.
FIRST EDITION. 12mo, (170 x 94mm), pp. [ii], viii, 360, the title-page engraved with central
vignette and highly decorative border, paper fault on F7 touching a couple of letters, paper fault or
marginal tear to H12, scattered foxing and staining, the final leaves quite badly browned and a little
fragile, uncut throughout in the original dark blue patterned wrappers, plain ruled printer’s waste
used on the pastedowns.
£1400
A fascinating work on the racial effects of climate by a French cleric whose writings
were startlingly ahead of his time. Thomas Jean Pichon, historiographer to Monsieur,
was canon of the Sainte Chapelle in his home town of Le Mans. His early writings
give no hint of his genius and
are fairly standard works
attacking the philosophes, in much
the same way as so many of his
fellow priests were doing. This
all changed with his modest
sounding Des études théologiques,
ou recherches sur les abus qui
s’opposent au progrès de la théologie
dans les écoles publiques, Avignon
1767, which contained ideas
that were highly suspect to his
contemporaries, challenging the
seminaries and criticising the
closed shop attitude of the
scholastic community.
He
described himself as a ‘patriotic
theologian’ - his use of the word
‘patriote’ is remarkable as early
as 1767.
Pichon’s La Physique de
l’Histoire is a principally a treatise
on the effects of the
environment on human beings.
In it he discusses the influence
of
climate
and
natural
surroundings on the character
and temperament of different
peoples, including their moral,
physical, intellectual, emotional
and social development. Pichon
divides the world into eight
climatic zones, four of which are located in each Hemisphere.
Of particular interest is the third chapter, devoted to skin colour, in which Pichon
discusses Maupertuis’ Vénus physique, 1745. ‘Les conjectures singulieres qu’a hazardées,
sur ce sujet, un Philosophe moderne, sont plutôt le fruit d’une belle imagination qui a
cherché à s’égayer, que le résultat de réflexions profondes qui, peut-être, auroient
moins touché’ (p. 15). Also of interest is Pichon’s discussion of physical attraction,
the temperament and character of women and the effects of climate on human
passion. Politics and law are also discussed, with particular reference to the emergence
of empire and the influence of climate on political ambition.
Although three editions were published in 1765, this is still a difficult book to find.
The edition with the imprint ‘Londres, Jean Nourse, 1765’ appears to be a reissue of
the present edition (ESTC t153717 at Oklahoma and Gottingen; OCLC adds NLM
and four copies in Germany).
Another edition appeared under the imprint
‘Amsterdam, aux dépens de la Compagnie’ (pp. 280); this is the most common of the
three, with a dozen copies in European libraries but only Newberry, CUNY and
Wisonsin in America. Of the present edition, OCLC lists BN, Wellcome, Koninklijke,
McGill, Stanford, UC Berkeley, Harvard, Missouri and Vanderbilt.
Cioranescu 49955.
Unrecorded
70. [POETICAL MISCELLANY.]
POEMS, MORAL AND DIVINE. Collected from the Best Authors; principally
intended to instil good Impressions into Youth; and Worthy the Perusal of all Those,
who have a Love to Virtue, and Taste for Poetry. The Second Edition. London:
Printed in the Year 1789.
SECOND EDITION. Small 8vo, (144 x 80mm), pp. [ii], 62, B3 a cancel?, tear through the text
on p. 45, partly repaired, with no loss, without the half-title, in contemporary speckled calf, spine
ruled in gilt with green morocco label lettered in gilt, front free endpaper torn away, later ownership
inscription of Lucy Nye, dated 1859, with the booklabel of J.O. Edwards.
£600
An unrecorded reprint of a slim anthology of verse, including poems by Pope,
Addison and the Scottish poet, Thomas Blacklock. The first edition is known in the
British Library copy only and was first ‘printed for the editor’ and ‘sold by J. Scott,
Bookseller, in Exchange-Alley, and at pamphlet shops in London and Westminster’.
That edition was undated and has been given a tentative date of 1760 by ESTC, a
dating that might be rethought in the light of the existence of this 1789 reprint. This
is a very attractive little book, in a slim contemporary binding.
See ESTC t54978 for first (undated) edition, at British Library only; not in CBEL list
of miscellanies; not in OCLC.
71. PYKE, Sarah Leigh (fl. 1795-1832).
ISRAEL, a Juvenile Poem. By Serena. Vol. I [-II]. Under the auspices of the Right
Honourable the Countess Dowager Powlett. printed by R. Cruttwell, for the Author;
and sold by Scratcherd and Co. Ave-Maria-Lane, London; and J. Poole, Taunton.
Bath, 1795.
FIRST EDITION. 8vo, (212 x 128mm), pp. xii, ix, [i], [11]-116; [iv], [5]-19, [1], 17-148,
printer’s decorative vignette on both title-pages, with half-titles, occasional contemporary manuscript
corrections, some light foxing, in contemporary marbled calf, upper joint cracking, some rubbing, spine
ruled in gilt (faded), red morocco label lettered in gilt, with the contemporary ownership inscription of
Sarah Rook (?) on the title-page.
£700
The scarce first edition, published by subscription, of a long narrative poem telling the
story of Joseph and his brothers in Egypt, as told in Genesis. Little seems to be
known of the juvenile author, Miss Pyke (given in ESTC as ‘Pike’, although her other
works are under ‘Pyke’) who published another poem in 1812, The Triumph of the
Messiah, published by subscription in Exeter. This was followed by Eighty Village
Hymns, published in Taunton in 1832. Her patron, the Countess Dowager ‘Powlett’,
was the widow of Vere Poulett, third Earl Poulett (1710-1788), who came from an old
Somerset family.
With a seven-page list of subscribers mostly from Bath and Bristol and the west
country. The slightly illegible ownership inscription on the title may refer to Miss
Rook of Appledore who subscribed, along with Mrs. Rook. ‘Four young ladies’ of
Mrs. Symonds’s School, Taunton, took a copy each, the Countess Dowager Poulett (or
Powlett on the title page), under whose ‘auspices’ the work was published, took four
copies with another eight copies going to other members of her family and a flashy
twenty copies were ordered by the mysterious ‘A Gentleman’.
ESTC t130331, at BL, Bodleian, Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society,
National Trust; Huntington, McMaster, Princeton and Yale.
Jackson, Romantic Poetry by Women, p. 265; not in Johnson, Provincial Poetry, which does
list her Triumph of the Messiah, 1812.
first book by ‘that swine of a Restif’
72. RESTIF DE LA BRETONNE, Nicolas-Edme. (1734-1866).
LA FAMILLE VERTUEUSE. Lettres traduites de l’Anglais. Par M. de la Bretone.
Première [-Quatrième] Partie. A Paris, chés la veuve Duchesne, rue S.t Jacques, audessous de la fontaine S.t Benoît, au Temple du Goût. [De l’imprimerie de Quillau].
1767.
FIRST EDITION. Four volumes, 12mo in eights and fours, (162 x 90mm), pp. xxxvi, 251; [iv],
[5]-288 (A7 and D1-4 misbound); [iv], [5]-300; [iv], [5]-299, [13] table, the title pages within
the usual ornamental borders, tear III 109-112, touching text but with no loss, repaired, in
contemporary sheep-backed green boards, brown and black morocco labels lettered and numbered in
gilt, simply gilt rules to the foot of the spines, red edges
£1800
The first edition of Restif’s first published work, an epistolary novel in four volumes.
It is not a translation from the English, as claimed on the title-page in fashionable
style, but is an original work about an aristocratic family and their adventures in
France and England. It is printed by Quilleau, for whom Restif worked as a proofreader and compositor, and is the first of several novels that Restif managed to get
printed during his time there. It made him a profit of 765 livres and it was on the
strength of this that he left the printing house and started writing professionally.
The Epître (pp. v-xiv) is addressed ‘Aus [sic] Jeunes Beautés’ and is followed by a
prefatory ‘Lettre de Mistress Eleanor à Miss Bridget’ (xv-xxxvi) in which Eleanor
explains how she came by the letters. Travelling between Kent and Hampton Court,
her father was set upon by some vagabonds and would have perished but for the
intervention of Lord B*. As usually follows in these situations, Eleanor’s simple
delight at her father’s safety delighted Lord B* who suggests that she become a
companion for his daughter, Miss Cecily. Cecily is a descendant of the comte de Lisse,
one of the main protagonists in the unhappy story that follows and Cecily, enraptured
by her new friend, gives her all the letters with a view to her arranging and publishing
them.
The title pages are set within the typical Restif ornamental printed borders. Rives
Childs (197-198) states that 2000 copies were printed - an impressive number for a
first work and a sure sign of Restif’s involvement in the printing process - nonetheless
the novel is now hard to come by and is comparatively scarce.
OCLC lists Lyon, BL, Cambridge, Leeds; McGill, Bancroft, Chicago, Harvard, Walters
Art Museum, Princeton and Yale.
Cioranescu 52652; MMF 67.43; Gay II 231-232; Rives Childs 197-198.
suite of plates by Gravelot
73. SACY, Claude-Louis-Michel de (1746-1790?).
or FONTENELLE, Bernard Le Bovier de (1657-1757).
LES AMOURS DE MIRTIL. 1761. A Constantinople.
FIRST EDITION. 8vo, (165 x 97mm), pp. [vii], [i], 141, engraved title-page, within ornamental
border, with six engraved plates, wanting the final blank (I8), with four-line manuscript poem tipped
in on final leaf, in contemporary mottled heraldic calf, triple filet gilt to covers with corner floral
tooling, spine gilt in compartments with red morocco label lettered in gilt, front joint very scruffy as a
result of early rather unsatisfactory repair work, nonetheless holding, gilt arms of Le Peletier de
Fargeau on each cover, with a four line note, in a contemporary hand, following the last line of the
text, and a four line manuscript poem ‘A Madame la Presidente d M**’ tipped in on a final blank
leaf, with the contemporary heraldic bookplate of Mr. le Mis. de Varennes.
£1600
A scarce, charmingly illustrated, fiction about the romantic adventures of Mirtil, the
son of Adonis, set in an idealised classical landscape peopled with gods and shepherds.
Often attributed to Fontenelle (who died four years before publication), MMF give the
author as Claude-Louis-Michel de Sacy, who would have been fifteen at the time of
publication. Historian and dramatist, Sacy was a regular contributor to the Journal des
Dames, author of Les amours de Sapho et de Phaon, Avignon, s.d. and L’esclavage des
Américains et des nègres, Paris 1775. The earliest work attributed to him by Cioranescu
was published in 1767.
With an engraved title page by Louis Legrand and six engraved plates by Hubert
François Gravelot (1699-1773), engraved by Louis Legrand. Each of the plates, placed
in the text to accompany the six ‘songs’ of the story, is described in the final
section(pp. 136-141) where the setting, characters depicted and symbolism of the
plates is explained. The dedication is to ‘Madame D...’.
Four lines of manuscript in a contemporary hand conclude the text: ‘L’amour jvis,
n’est autre chose qu’un sentiment qu’enfante le désir; son régne dure moins que celui
de la rose, et d’ordinaire il meurt dans le sein du plaisir’. Tipped in after the final leaf
of text is a manuscript quatrain entitled ‘A Madame la Presidente de M **’.
An English translation, The Loves of Mirtil, Son of Adonis, appeared in 1770,
maintaining the false ‘Constantinople’ imprint. Another edition, equally scarce, was
published in French in the same year, in duodecimo, also with the ‘Constantinople’
imprint.
OCLC lists Cambridge, Monash, Linkoping, Indiana, Harvard and New York Public
Library.
MMF 61.19; Cohen-de Ricci 77.
74. SCOTT, Thomas Nicol (1705-1775).
THE ANGLERS. Eight Dialogues. In verse. printed for E. Dilly, at the Rose and
Crown, in the Poultry, near the Mansion-House. London: 1758.
FIRST EDITION. 12mo, (157 x 90mm), pp. [iv], 56, bound with three other pieces of verse, in
contemporary speckled calf, rubbed at extremities and front joint cracking, spine gilt in compartments,
red morocco label lettered in gilt ‘Anglers Companion’, from the library of Alexander Fraser Tytler,
Lord Woodhouselee (1747-1813), with his bookplate.
£2500
A charming poem written in celebration of the art of fishing. The preface includes a
humorous justification of angling: ‘It is well known that angling is not a mere
recreation, but a business, a business which employeth most orders, professions and
occupations among men. This might be fairly proved by an induction of particulars.
For instance, we Booksellers angle for Authors, and Authors angle for a dinner or for
fame. Again, doth not the Lawyer angle for clients, the Doctor for a fee, the Divine
for preferment, the Statesman for secrets, the Courtier for a pension, and the Needy
for a place? Further, what is he who offereth a bribe, but a fisher for another man’s
conscience? And what is He who taketh a bribe, but the silly fish that is caught with
the bait?’ (‘The bookseller to the reader’, pp. iii-iv).
Scott was a schoolmaster from Norfolk who became a dissenting minister at
Lowestoft and then Ipswich. He wrote a number of popular hymns and published
several sermons as well as half a dozen other books of verse. The Anglers was reprinted
in Ruddiman’s Collection of scarce, curious and valuable pieces, Edinburgh 1773-85 and a
large portion of it was used by Lathy in his poem ‘The Angler’.
This copy is from Alexander Fraser Tytler’s library, the first part of which was sold
by auction at Edinburgh in August 2002. Lot 946 of that sale was another copy of this
book, which made £5,546. The present copy was auctioned in a second sale of the
Fraser Tytler library in London. Clearly he had two copies. The fact that this copy is
bound with other pieces of verse and is labelled, rather charmingly, ‘Angler’s
Companion’, may suggest that it was bound up in this way in order to be taken with
him on his fishing trips.
ESTC t88370, at BL and St. Andrews, Bowdoin, Cornell, Harvard, Huntington,
Library Company of Philadelphia, NYPL, Princeton, Bancroft and Yale.
Westwood and Satchell, p. 6 (’the original edition has become rare’); Copsey, Suffolk
Writers, pp. 426-427).
in contemporary red morocco
75. SENAULT, Louis (fl. 1669-1680).
HEURES NOUVELLES tirées de la Sainte Ecriture. Ecrites et gravées par L.
Senault. A Paris, chez l’autheur ruë du Petie Lion au fauxbourg St. Germain en la
Maison de Mr Frontié. Et chez Claude de Hansy sur le Pont au Change a l’Image St.
Nicholas. [1689-1715?]
8vo, (190 x 115), engraved frontispiece portrait and pp. [ii], 260, engraved throughout, title and text
within double line border (p. 47 omitted and p. 223 corrected by hand and repeated), with three
further engraved plates, each within a gilt border (rather amateurishly applied), text fairly browned in
part, in contemporary red morocco, richly gilt, fairly rubbed, upper corners restored, green silk
pastedowns.
£800
An attractive copy of a scarce edition of this gorgeously engraved book of hours. A
popular devotional work, it was several times reprinted but remains rare in any edition.
The text is printed within a border throughout and is accompanied by numerous
vignettes, head and tail-pieces and engraved intitials.
The four engraved plates are of St. Thérèse d'Avila engraved by La Cottre after C.
Le Brun; St. Bruno by Raymond after Champagne; the Virgin and Child, with John the
Baptiste is after Mignard and St. Peter, by Raymond after Le Giude. Different copies
appear to have included different plates; the BN copy has a plate of St. Mary
Magdalene (Raymond after Coypel) in place of our St. Peter.
OCLC lists UCLA, Delaware, Harvard, North Carolina and Free Library of
Philadelphia.
on the female mind, both French and English
76. THOMAS, Antoine-Léonard (1732-1767).
KINDERSLEY, Jemima Wicksteed (1741?-1809), translator.
AN ESSAY ON THE CHARACTER, THE MANNERS, AND THE
UNDERSTANDING OF WOMEN, in different Ages. Translated from the French
of Mons. Thomas, by Mrs. Kindersley. With two original essays. printed for J.
Dodsley, in Pall Mall. London: 1781.
FIRST EDITION OF THIS TRANSLATION. 12mo, (165 x 97mm), pp. viii, 232, text
considerably spotted and browned, some marginal dampstaining, in contemporary half sheep over
marbled boards, well-used, binding worn, extremities bumped, joints cracking, label missing, head and
tail of spine chipped, with the ownership inscription ‘F. St. Aubin from M. S. M 1814’ on the front
pastedown; a tatty copy of an uncommon book.
£1400
A scarce English translation of an important study of women, translated from the
French by an obscure English woman ‘of very humble birth’ who adds two essays of
her own on the same subject (Essays I & II, pp. 217-232). In her introduction,
Jemima Kindersley explains that she had begun working on a project to write Essays on
the Female Mind when she came across the present work, whose plan was so close to
the one she had conceived that she was afraid of being unjustly accused of plagiarism
if she continued to publication. Additionally, thinking that Thomas’ work was
superior to her own, she decided the world would be better served by an English
translation than by an inferior work on the same subject.
‘I am however not deterred from pursuing the same subject, and (if I may use the
expression) filling up the outlines which Mons. Thomas has sketched ... In respect to
English women in particular, it cannot be improper to consider their character in
different periods, with the causes which have given rise to the changes in their modes
of life, and consequently influenced their manners, their ideas and their morals. From
these thoughts there will naturally arise some thoughts upon female education. The
degree of instruction which was suitable when women spent their lives more in
retirement, is insufficient in the present times ... Should I be so fortunate as to assist
one mother in the task of inspiring her daughter .... Should I prevail upon one woman
to examine her own heart, to listen to the dictates of her conscience, and obey its laws;
Should I teach one woman to believe what great and good things she is capable of,
and to raise herself above the follies with which she is surrounded; my labours will be
amply repaid, I shall not have lived an useless member of society’ (pp. iii-vi).
Thomas’ Essai sur le caractère, les moeurs et l’esprit des femmes was first published in 1772
and first translated into English in the following year by a Mr. Russell. Numerous
French editions followed and it was also translated into Italian. Thomas’ popular and
wide-ranging study of women includes the heroines of Sparta, Athenian prostitutes
and famous women of the modern era. He examines the influence on women of
Christianity and chivalry and compares women to men, being fairly harsh on what he
considers to be the common faults of women, and stressing the difference between
the sexes. He discusses a number of women writers and books on women written in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and pleads the case for celebrated women
writers.
Another edition of this translation, given as by ‘Mr.’ Kindersley, was published by
Dodsley in 1800 (ESTC n43403, at BL, NYPL and Penn only). In the first of Mrs.
Kindersley’s essays she compares the situation of women in Asia with women in the
Netherlands, arguing that the Asian women, though they appear to have no freedom,
yet excersise a degree if power not available to the Dutch women, for, ‘where the men
are of a phlegmatic disposition ... and cold in their attachments to the sex, the natural
power of women must consequently be small’ (p. 222). In her second essay, Mrs.
Kindersley discusses those women who have no male relation to whom obedience is
due, or, worse than the widow, those unfortunate wives whose husbands are sunk in
vice and debauchery: ‘How difficult to teach [the children] to reverence the parent,
whose vices she must teach them to abhor’ (p. 230).
ESTC t109483, listing BL, Bodleian, Wellcome; NYPL, Princeton, Kansas and Texas
only.
78. Tiphaigne de la Roche
77. TIPHAIGNE DE LA ROCHE, Charles-François (1722-1774).
AMOUR DÉVOILÉ ou le Systême des Simpathistes, Où l'on explique l'origine de
l'Amour, des Inclinations, des Simpathies, des Aversions, des Antipathies, &c ... [s.l.]
1749.
FIRST EDITION. 12mo, (154 x 87mm), pp. viii, 170, in contemporary mottled calf, binding
restored and bound very close at the back, spine gilt in continuous pattern, red morocco label lettered in
gilt.
£2000
The scarce first edition of this wonderful jeu d'esprit by Tiphaignie de la Roche, author
of Giphantie and one of the most unsung inventive and fantastical writers of the
French eighteenth century. L'Amour Dévoilé is his first work and it takes the form of
an eccentric philosophical debate on the nature of physical love and its intimate
connection with sweat or perspiration. He develops a physiological system which he
uses to account for sexual attraction, in brief, it is an early thesis on the theory of
pheromones. A doctor as well as a writer, this work, as with many of his others, is an
imaginative blend of scientific fact and fantasy, the whole presented as the entertaining
doctrine of this eccentric medecin philosophe.
‘Trivial as this thesis might look, it shows a commendable effort to reject
mythological sillinesses about love and to shape a materialistic concept of attraction
and affinities that leads to Goethe as well as to Charles Fourier ... several semi-fictional
themes [are] elaborated in the book, such as the automaton or woman-robot ... De la
Roche should be greeted among the precursors of modern Science Fiction’ (MA in
Science Fiction Studies, Volume 9, Part I, March 1982).
The work is conceived on three axis: the first, an examination of the system of
Plato, the second, an examination of the principles and opinions of Aristotle and
Descartes, both these parts being negative appraisals in which Tiphaigne shows the
absurdity of the philosophers' thoughts in order to present his own theory, the third
and most compelling part of the book, his system of love based on 'la matières
sympathique qui s'exhale des corps'.
Cioranescu 61971; Conlon, Siècle, no. 49:877.
futuristic scientific utopia – owned by the king’s mistress
78. TIPHAIGNE DE LA ROCHE, Charles-François (1722-1774).
GIPHANTIE. Premiere [-Seconde] Partie. A Babylone. 1760.
FIRST EDITION. Two parts in one volume, 8vo, (162 x 99mm), pp. [iv], 176; [iv], 174, in
contemporary heraldic mottled calf with the arms of Diane-Adélaide de Brancas de Lauraguais
(1714-1769) - one of the great bibliophiles of eighteenth century France.
£5500
A fabulous copy from the library of Diane-Adélaide de Brancas de Lauraguais (17141769), one of the great female bibliophiles of eighteenth century France. This is the
first edition of Tiphaigne de la Roche’s wonderful Utopian cum science fiction novel
and his most famous work, which includes the earliest imaginary description of
photography as well as of prototype televisions and telephones.
Escaping death in a hurricane, the hero finds himself on the enchanted fertile island
of Giphantia (Giphantie: an anagram of the author's name), where he is greeted by a
benevolent shade, the prefect of the island, in the form of a speaking cloud. The
prefect demonstrates numerous spacial and temporal gadgets by which the traveller
can observe the world. He shows the probation-column where the spirits are purified
between their missions. Beyond this is a large globe from which come loud noises
representing the excessive sorrows and joys of mortals. There are tiny pipes on the
surface of the globe, through which one can hear what is being said in any part of the
world.
Chapter 17 contains a remarkable description prefiguring the techniques of
photography. The prefect of the island shows the hero into a room where he sees
through the window a storm at sea. Not able to credit his sight, being in the middle of
the desert, he runs to the window and bumps into the wall, finding the window to be
an illusion. The Prefect explains to him:
'That window, that vast horizon, those thick clouds, that raging sea, are all but a
picture ... Thou knowest that the rays of light, reflected from different bodies, make a
picture and paint the bodies upon all polished surfaces, on the retina of the eye, for
instance, on water, on glass. The elementary spirits have studied to fix these transient
images: they have composed a most subtile matter, very viscous, and proper to harden
and dry, by the help of which a picture is made in the twinkle of an eye ... [the]
impression of the images is made the first instant they are received on the canvas,
which is immediately carried away into some dark place; an hour after, the subtile
matter dries, and you have a picture so much the more valuable, as it cannot be
imitated by art nor damaged by time’ (quoted from the English edition, London 1761,
pp. 95-96).
Georges Vicaire, in his Tiphaigne de la Roche et la Première Idée de la Photographie en 1760,
credits Tiphaigne with a great deal more than a fertile imagination. ‘On peut dire, en
somme, que Tiphaigne a été le précurseur des Niepce et des Daguerre et que, s’il n’a
pas inventé la photographie, il en a donné la première idée. Tiphaigne est mort, en
1774, âgé de 45 ans. Qui sait ... si sa vie eut été plus longue, si le monde n’eut pas
profité, soixante ans plus tot, de la magnifique découverte dont la France s’honore’.
Provenance: with the arms of Diane-Adélaïde de Mailly, Duchesse de BrancasLauragais (1714-1769) on both covers. Diane-Adélaïde was the third of the famous de
Nesle sisters, four of whom (including her) were at some point mistress to Louis XV.
Her sister, the more famous Duchesse de Châteauroux, was the most influential and
longest-lasting mistress, before all the sisters were eclipsed by Madame de Pompadour.
Diane-Adélaide married, in 1742, Louis de Brancas, duc de Lauragais. She assembled
a large and important library, largely of literature, a large part of which was purchased
by the Duc de La Vallière.
Cioranescu 61980; MMF 60.32; Hartig p. 56; Lewis p. 188; Gernsheim, The History of
Photography, p. 26; not in Gove.
See Quentin-Bauchart, Les Femmes Bibliophiles de France, II, p. 439.
79. TIPHAIGNE DE LA ROCHE, Charles-François (1722-1774).
GIPHANTIE. Premiere [-Seconde] Partie. A Babylone. 1760.
FIRST EDITION. Two parts in one volume, 8vo, (160 x 93mm), pp. [iv], 176; [iv], 174, in
contemporary mottled calf, rather worn, the spine simply decorated and lettered in gilt, with ‘J. Merger
Avoué’ stamped in gilt on the lower compartment, wormhole on lower cover, extremities bumped,
various inscriptions on the title-page, all of ‘May’ or ‘May Michelin’, with another early ownership
inscription on the first page of text, crossed out.
£3500
Not such a glamorous copy as the previous one, but a sound copy in a contemporary
binding, with a library stamp at the foot of the spine.
Cioranescu 61980; MMF 60.32; Hartig p. 56; Lewis p. 188; Gernsheim, The History of
Photography, p. 26; not in Gove.
the rarest of all Tiphaigne de la Roche titles
80. TIPHAIGNE DE LA ROCHE, Charles-François (1722-1774).
HISTOIRE DES GALLIGÈNES, ou Mémoires de Duncan. Première [-Seconde]
Partie. chez Arkstée, & Merkus, Libraires; et se trouve à Paris, chez la Veuve Durand,
Libraire, rue du Foin. A Amsteram, 1765.
FIRST EDITION. Two parts in one volume, 12mo, (164 x 93mm), pp. [iv], 165, [1] blank;
]iv], 136, with the half titles, in contemporary patterned calf, with the arms of Jean-Armand marquis
de Joyeuse et de Ville-sur-Tourbe, comte de Grandpré (1718-1774) gilt on the boards, spine gilt in
compratments with red and brown morocco labels lettered and numbered in gilt.
£8500
A legendary rarity among utopias and Tiphaigne de la Roche’s most brilliant work.
Once thought to be by Diderot, this is a socialist utopia where during the course of
the novel the author questions the viability of an ideal society. The traveller, Duncan,
is shipwrecked in the tropics, only to find himself warmly welcomed by a people
speaking an ancient dialect of French. It turns out that the islanders are descended
from a Frenchman who had been shipwrecked with his two children and had set about
populating the island (which rose out of the sea at the moment of the shipwreck) and
building it into a peaceful republic. Equal education for both sexes, no distinctions of
rank or private ownership, no priests or organised religion, the islanders even have no
concept of individual families, as the children are removed at birth from their mother,
as all are deemed to be brothers and the republic to be the mother of all. As the novel
progresses, the ideal nature of the island society - or rather of humanity’s ability to
achieve utopia - is increasingly questioned and by its conclusion, Tiphaigne de la
Roche’s underlying pessimism is tipping the balance from utopia to dystopia.
‘Peut-être un example d’une compréhension de Swift rare au XVIIIe siècle ...
Tiphaigne de la Roche dépeint une société qui a eu toutes les chances d’atteindre à la
perfection, mais qui, parce que ses membres sont des mortels avec les caractéristiques
innées de la race humaine, se révèle à l’époque où le voyageur européen fait naufrage
sur leurs côtes, encore loin d’un état de bonheur complet’ (Goulding, quoted in Gove,
p. 354).
80. Tiphaigne de la Roche
‘Lichtenberger considère que ce roman utopique est très supérieur à la moyenne du
genre. Son originalité réside dans le fait que l’auteur n’a pas une idée statique de l’Etat
utopique: il peut y avoir révolte, cet Etat étant enclin à se dégrader comme tout autre
système. “Pour son pessimisme ironique et résigné, l’auteur mérite peut-être un
souvenir, non seulement parmi les communistes, mais parmi les littérateurs
secondaires de son temps”’ (Hartig, p. 58).
The work was reprinted five years after its first appearance under the longer title
Histoire naturelle civile et politique des Galligenes antipodes de la nation françoise, dont ils tirent leur
origine; où l’on développe le naissance, les progrès, les moeurs & les vertus singulieres de ces insulaires.
Les révolutions & les productions merveilleuses de leur isle, avec l’histoire de leur fondateur, Geneve,
Cramer, 1770 (OCLC lists Poitiers, Newberry and Duke only). There were also two
reprints in the late twentieth century, by EDHIS and Slatkine. At the time, the only
known copy of the work had been in the Bibliothèque Nationale, but it had
disappeared (and is still catalogued as ‘indisponible : absence constatée (après
récolement)’) and the reprint was only made possible when a copy was found in a
private collection.
OCLC lists copies at the British Library and the Instituto Univ. Europeo and
University of Gotha.
MMF 65.50; Cioranescu 61982; Gove, The Imaginary Voyage in Prose Fiction, p. 354;
Hartig.
81. TIPHAIGNE DE LA ROCHE, Charles-François (1722-1774).
L'EMPIRE DES ZAZIRIS sur les Humains, ou la Zazirocratie. chez Dsmgtlfpqxz
[sic]. A Pekin, 1761.
FIRST EDITION. 12mo, (141 x 87mm), pp. [ii], xvi, 121, the text printed in a double rule
throughout, in contemporary probably German half calf over speckled boards, spine gilt in
compartments with red morocco label lettered in gilt, head and tail of spine chipped, label worn,
extremities rubbed, with the later bookplate of Herm. Gottwald Offenburg and a shelf-mark label
written in ink.
£2800
Like his more famous Giphantie, Tiphaigne de la Roche’s L’Empire des Zaziris is about
the ‘esprits élémentaires’ who exist all around us without our knowledge and who
influence every human action. Unlike the more benevolent spirits of Giphantie, those
of the present novel are rather darker, looking on human beings for entertainment, ‘as
flies to wanton boys’.
‘Vision ou songe non-utopique. L’auteur se réclame du fantastique extraordinaire.
C’est surtout un livre contre le “matérialism”, contres Descartes, Leibnitz, Newton,
Helvétius. Contre la philosophie rationaliste sont invoqués les ‘démons qui nous
tourmentent et qui sont les puissances des ténèbres’. Les Zaziris ou ‘esprits
élémentaires’ sont les véritables agents du monde, c’est leur empire sur les hommes qui
est le sujet du livre. Vu l’attitude anti-philosophique de l’ouvrage, on est incline à ne
pas prendre pour ironie telle phrase de la préface: ‘On doit respecter la religion,
honorer les souverains, se taire sur les gouvernements, éviter les personnalités et
ensuite se moquer du reste’. Cet ouvrage s’inscrit dans la lignée d’Amilec et de
Giphantie.’ (Hartig, p. 57).
A German translation was published later the same year under the title Die Herrschaft
des Zaziris über die Menschen oder die Zazirocratie, sl. 1761. An English translation by Brian
Stableford was published in 2011. This is one of the scarcer of Tiphaigne de la Roche
titles, seldom seen on the market.
OCLC lists BN, BL, Cambridge, Bodleian, McMaster, Newberry, Michigan, Columbia,
Penn State and UCLA.
Cioranescu 61981; Hartig p. 57; not in MMF.
the Huth, Muirehead copy
82. TRYON, Thomas (1634-1703).
A NEW METHOD FOR EDUCATING CHILDREN: or, Rules and directions for
the well ordering and governing them, during their younger years. Shewing that they
are capable, at the age of three years, to be caused to learn languages, and most arts
and sciences; which, if observ’d by parents, would be of greater value than a thousand
pounds portion. Also, what methods is to be used by breeding women, and what diet
is most proper for them, and their children, to prevent wind, vapours, convulsions,
&c. Written (to dis-engage the world from those ill customs in education, it has been
so long used to) by Tho. Tryon; author of the Way to health, long life and happiness.
Recommended to parents, nurses, tutors, and all others concerned in the educating of
children. printed for J. Salusbury, at the Rising-Sun in Cornhill; and J. Harris, at the
Harrow, in the Poul rey [sic], London: 1695.
FIRST EDITION. Small 8vo, (138 x 75mm), pp. [viii], 102, [10], at the foot of the title-page
‘Price bound one shilling’, natural paper flaw in E5 compromises a few letters, in nineteenth century
polished calf by Bedford, triple gilt filets, spine elaborately gilt in compartments with contrasting
morocco labels lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers, gilt edges, with the Huth, Edgar F. Leon, Louise
Ward Watkins, Arnold Muirhead and John Lawson booklabels.
£6500
The sole edition of this scarce treatise on the education of children by the eccentric
Thomas Tryon, merchant, mystic, early advocate of vegetarianism and author of selfhelp books. The self-taught shepherd-boy ran away from home to follow a career as a
hatter, in pursuit of which he travelled to Barbados, where he was also in search of
religious tolerance. He was so shocked by what he witnessed there of the cruelty of
slavery that he returned to England determined to publish his experiences. Over the
next twenty years he published twenty-seven works on diverse subjects, including
slavery, nutrition, temperance, education, ecology and personal health. His Way to
Health, 1691, is said to have inspired Benjamin Franklin to adopt vegetarianism. His
writings were also admired by Shelley and Aphra Behn.
‘[Benjamin Franklin] became in his day a 'Tryonist'; nor is it in any degree fanciful to
discover a marked likeness between the style of Franklin and the quaint moralising of
Tryon, though there is in the latter a vein of mystical piety to which 'Poor Richard,'
with all his virtues, is a stranger’ (DAB).
Tryon’s plan for the education of children is based both on a respect for their ability
to learn even at any early age and on the principle that the child’s diet and whole self
are bound up with the act of education. He condemns the present system as being
narrow, inspired by self-interest and governed by fear. ‘This is indeed the Craft of
your common School Masters, to keep Children (like Spiders in a Circle) a long time
under the Terror of their Jurisdiction and Discipline, in order only to promote their
own Profit and Interest’ (p. v).
The final ten pages contain an appendix to Tryon’s work, ‘Some further Thoughts
concerning the Education of Children, by another hand’, signed by Andrew Prime.
This appears to be Prime’s only work.
ESTC r34678, at BL, NLW, Bodleian, Rylands, National Trust, Wellcome; Academy
of Medicine, Folger, Huntington, Newberry, UCLA and Yale.
Wing T 3190.
83. TUITE, Eliza Dorothea, Lady (1764-1850).
POEMS by Lady Tuite. printed for T. Cadell, Jun. and W. Davies, (Successors to Mr.
Cadell), Strand. London: 1796.
FIRST EDITION. 8vo, (158 x 96mm), pp. [viii], 199, with the half-title, some light browning in
the text, in contemporary half calf over marbled boards, rather worn, extremities rubbed and joints
cracking, head and tail of spine chipped, spine ruled in gilt with red morocco label lettered in gilt, with
the contemporary heraldic bookplate of William Wallace and the later booklabel of James O.
Edwards.
£900
First edition of Lady Tuite’s first collection of poetry, dedicated to her aunt, the
Countess of Moira, Baroness Hastings. It was a fairly popular work, running to a
second edition in 1799 and a third, expanded edition which was published under the
title Miscellaneous Poetry, Bath, 1841. Her only other published work was a prose tale for
children, Edwin and Mary, 1818.
Born and brought up in Newbridge near Dublin, by 1796 Tuite was living in Bath in
difficult circumstances. Joyce Fullard, in A Dictionary of British and American Women
Writers, suggests that she may have been suffering ill health; she was undoubtedly
suffering from lack of funds. The dedication to her aunt, signed ‘Gay Street, Bath,
March, 1796’, speaks of a treasured friendship and a debt of gratitude: ‘Circumstanced
as we are, it can never be in my power to repay your kindness but by gratitude and
affection; and the opportunities of expressing these sentiments occur so rarely, I will
not let slip the present one ... With the motive that induces me thus to appear before
the public you are not unacquainted’.
The poems, which include lyrics, tales, ballads, elegies, pastorals and a final
collection of songs, address a range of issues including social corruption, the need for
reform, patriotism and the prevailing fashions in dress. A central theme running
through many of the poems is female friendship, particularly that of a close friendship
with an unnamed woman, who appears to have helped Tuite through a time of
personal crisis. This woman must have died before 1796 as the collection includes
both a moving elegy to her and a shorter poem, ‘To the Memory of my Best Friend’.
‘She repeatedly pictures the Muses as refusing her aid, but some pieces, particularly
songs and occasional poems, are very pleasing. She attends both to the age’s gore and
treason, ‘by horror stain’d’, and also to its social and sexual wrong-doing’ (Feminist
Companion).
ESTC t115957, listing a handful in the UK and Cornell, Rice, UCLA, Colorado,
Illinois, North Carolina and Yale.
unrecorded title
84. TURMEAU de la Morandière, Denis-Laurian (fl. 1760-1764).
LES FEMMES DE PLAISIR ou Representations à Monsieur le Lieutenant General
de Police de Paris. Sur les Courtisannes à la mode & les Demoiselles du bon ton. De
l’Imprimerie d’une Société d’Hommes ruinés par les Femmes. A Paris. 1760. Sans
Approbation des Demoiselles de Paris.
FIRST EDITION, unrecorded issue. 8vo, (160 x 94mm), pp. ix, [i], 226, with a cancel title-
page, in later half calf over marbled boards, spine decorated in blind and lettered in gilt, rather rubbed
along extremities, marbled endpapers and edges.
£2500
An unrecorded issue of this scarce treatise on the prostitutes of Paris. Not only does
the author give a colourful picture of the proliferation of prostitution in different
walks of life, he also does not pull his punches when it comes to criticising the efforts
of the police to control the situation: ‘La Police de Paris ne fit pas assez d’attention à
ce luxe naissant’, (p. 190). If the police had been doing their job properly, and arrests
made earlier, the situation would not have become so serious and widespread. ‘Paris
est aujourd’hui pour les femmes de lieu des métamorphoses de la France, c’est le pays
des Fées, où les plus viles créatures deviennent tout d’un coup des Princesses, qui ont
une Cour, un train, une suite’ (p. 198). Not surprisingly given its outspoken criticism
of the police, the work was seized on publication and destroyed, accounting for its
extreme rarity today.
‘Mon dessein n’a pas été de faire ici le Roman Comique de nos moeurs, ou un livre
divertissant pour amuser les gens oisifs de Paris; mais de donner le portrait de ce vice
dans toutes ses proportions ou plutôt disproportions. Je me regarderois comme le
premier Citoyen de la République Françoise si l’exposition que j’en fais pouvoit
engager l’administration a y apporter quelque reméde; car c’est aujourd’hui le Crime de
Leze Maj. au premier Chef de la société de Paris’ (Préface, pp. vii-viii).
This rare work was first published as Réprésentations à Monsieur le lieutenant général de
police de Paris [Antoine de Sartine]. Sur les courtisanes à la mode & les demoiselles du bon ton,
Paris: Impr. d’une Société de gens ruinés par les femmes, 1760. There appear to have
been two separate editions under this earlier title in 1760, one with pp. x, 108, held in a
single copy at the BN and one with pp. ix, 226, with copies at the BN and the BL.
The BN also holds a third edition of the text, also under the ‘Réprésentations’ title,
dated 1762, with a pagination of pp. ix, 177, also with the imprint ‘Paris, de l’impr.
d’une société des gens ruinés par les femmes’. This seems to be the common edition,
with copies at the University of Chicago, National Library of Medicine and Cornell.
Attributed to Turmeau de la Morandière, a demographer whose was concerned with
the prevalence of begging, homelessness and prostitution in France. His other works
include Police sur les mendians, les vagabonds, les joueurs de profession, les intrigans, les filles
prostituées, les domestiques hors de maison depuis long-tems, & les gens sans aveu, Paris, Dessain
Junior, 1764 and Appel des étrangers dans nos colonies, Paris 1763 (reprinted 1973). The
present work is not in Cioranescu, who records only his Principes politiques sur le rappel
des protestans en France, Paris 1768, although there is an earlier edition, given on the title
page as ‘Amsterdam, aux dépens de la Compagnie, 1764, but actually printed in Paris
by Jean-Baptiste-Paul Valleyre and Dessain Junior. The second part of the second
volume of this work contains his ‘Question sur la légitimité du mariage des protestans
françois, célébré hors du royaume’.
OCLC lists BN and BL only for the other issue and no copy with this title.
Not in Cioranescu.
85. VARET, Alexandre-Louis (1632-1676).
THE CHRISTIAN EDUCATION OF CHILDREN, According to the Maxims of
the Sacred Scripture, and the Instructions of the Fathers of the Church. Written and
Several Times Printed in French, and now Translated into English. At Paris, by John
Baptiste Coignard [ie London?] at the Golden Bible in S. James’s-street. 1678.
FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH. 8vo, (150 x 90mm), pp. [xiv], 412, occasionally cropped close
at the top shaving the headline, in contemporary plain calf, rather worn, wanting the pastedowns, with
the booklabels of Arnold Muirhead and John Lawson.
£1500
The first appearance in English of Varet’s De l’Education chrestienne des enfans, Paris 1666.
Alexandre-Louis Varet was a leading jansenist who wrote a number of works on
education and was a key player in some of the most significant jansenist debates. He
is mostly remembered, however, for his scandalous Factum pour les religieuses de SainteCatherine-lez-Provins, contre les PP. Cordeliers, 1668, a controversial work in which Varet
makes various lewd accusations against the Cordeliers. The work was popularised in
England in a translation
under the title The Nunns
Complaint against the Fryars,
London 1676 (Wing V110).
The publication of the
present rather serious work
only two years later
suggests that the publishers
were trying to take
advantage
of
Varet’s
notoriety.
The imprint is false; Wing
suggests London as the
place of publication though
the actual printer is
unknown. This edition was
reissued with the imprint
‘London, printed for Henry
Brome, at the Gun at the
west end of S. Pauls, 1678’,
with the title page reset and
quire B partly re-imposed.
ESTC r203876, at BL,
Ushaw, Oxford, Folger,
Huntington, Minnesota and
Yale.
Wing V108; see Cioranescu
XVII 65483.
86. VOLTAIRE, François Marie Arouet de (1694-1778).
CANDIDE, ou l’Optimisme. Traduit de l’Allemand. de Mr. le Docteur Ralph. 1759.
FIRST ITALIAN EDITION. 8vo, (157 x 92mm), pp. 190, [2] blank, p. 160 misnumbered
‘60’, title page and A2 a little browned, in contemporary half sheep over mottled pink boards, spine
gilt in compartments, yellow morocco label lettered in gilt, with the stamp of W.G. Thun on the titlepage and the Tetschner Bibliothek library stamp in red on the verso.
£2800
One of the scarcer of the seventeen known editions of Candide to be published in
1759, this is thought to be the first Italian edition. Believed to have been printed
towards the end of 1759 as it is sometimes found with an edition of Thorel de
Campigneulles’ continuation, dated 1760.
‘D’après Wade ... l’impression elle-même est italienne et la traduction italienne de
1759 a été faite d’après cette même édition’ (BN Voltaire Catalogue, 2634).
OCLC lists Cambridge, Bodleian, Yale, Chicago, Princeton, NYPL and Texas.
BN Voltaire Catalogue 2635; not in Bengesco.
87. VOLTAIRE, François Marie Arouet de (1694-1778).
L'INGÉNU, Histoire Veritable.
Amsterdam]. A Londres, 1767.
Tirée des Manuscrits du Pere Quesnel. [ie.
[with] LA PRINCESSE DE BABILONE. Londres [ie. Amsterdam]. 1768.
Two works in one volume, 8vo, (215 x 130mm), pp. [iv], 89; [ii], 100, line 16 on p. 5 begins
‘eux’, uncut throughout in the original wrappers, slightly damp-stained, extremities a little dog-eared,
binding slightly sprung with spine standing a little proud beneath the lower cord, small wormhole to
front cover and margin of title-page, otherwise a good, clean, unsophisticated copy.
£1000
An attractive uncut copy of two of Voltaire’s contes philosophiques, both issued under
false Londres imprints in the same year as the first editions. The first, L’Ingénu, tells of
the young Frenchman brought up among the Hurons who returns to a corrupt France
(and false imprisonment, religious intolerance and so forth, not to mention a tragic
ending) and the second, La Princesse de Babylone, gives a philosophical critique of the
oriental and western world, as the beautiful princess, Formosante, and her lover,
Amazan, chase through country after country looking for each other. Henri Coulet, in
categorising Voltaire’s contes, gives L’Ingénu as ‘un roman de mœurs et une nouvelle
tragique’ while La Princesse de Babylone is described simply as ‘un conte de fées’.
This is one of several ‘Londres’ printings among the flurry of L’Ingénu editions that
appeared in the same year as the first Geneva printing. ‘Edition hollandaise, faite
d’après l’édition de Genève, dans laquelle les fautes signalées dans l’errata ont été
corrigées’ (BN Voltaire catalogue). Bound with the scarcer issue of this Amsterdam
printing of La Princesse de Babilone with a Londres imprint. The ornaments on both title
pages, and the temporary binding suggest the same printer. ‘One of two printings
evidently issued by the same press but largely reset’ (Texas). The other issue is ESTC
t109381, where line 16 on p. 5 begins ‘pour’.
L’Ingénu: ESTC t95253, listing BL, Birmingham, Cambridge and Taylorian, half a
dozen copies in Poland and Estonia; Newberry, Lilly, Texas and two copies at Brown;
BN Voltaire Catalogue 2823; MMF 67.52.
La Princesse de Babilone: ESTC n48505, listing the National Trust and Texas only; not in
the BN Voltaire Catalogue; MMF 68.56.
earliest known version; unrecorded in the bibliographies
88. VOLTAIRE, François Marie Arouet de (1694-1778).
PORTEFEUILLE NOUVEAU,
Londres. 1739.
ou Mêlanges Choisis. En vers et en prose.
A
FIRST EDITION. 8vo, (192 x 121mm), pp. [ii], 48, bound with Conseils: pp. 14, drop-head title
only; Épîtres: pp. 8, 7, 6, [1], drop-head titles only; Épître sur l’honneur: pp. 7, drop-head title only;
La Sagesse: pp. 8, drop-head title only, in contemporary sprinkled calf, some wear to extremities,
spine gilt in compartments, red morocco label lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers, red edges.
£3400
A very scarce Voltaire miscellany, unknown to the standard Voltaire bibliographies.
This slim collection includes the first printing of Voltaire’s celebrated poem written to
the marquise du Gouvernet, Épître envoiée à Madame la Marquise de ... quelque tems après son
mariage (pp. 18-20), an important text which was frequently reprinted under the title
Épître connue sous le nom de Vous et des Tu (see Bengesco 740 and BN Voltaire Catalogue
378, both of which give the first edition of the text as printed in Recueil de nouvelles pièces
fugitives en prose et en vers, par M. de Voltaire, Londres 1741).
There are numerous textual differences between this earlier printing of the poem
and its appearance under the title Lettre de Mr. de V ... à Mademoiselle O ... devenue depuis
Mme de ... in the 1741 collection. The 1741 version of the poem divides it into four
stanzas (in the present version it is continuous) and has small changes of capitalisation
and grammar throughout. There are changes of words and phrases, such as the
substitution of the words ‘laquais’ for ‘atours’ and ‘mauvais’ for ‘petit’ in lines 3 and 5
or the use of the phrase ‘Qui pendent a vos deux oreilles’ in place of ‘Qui dechirent
vos deux oreilles’ (line 48) or the final line where the poet recalls the kisses ‘De ma
Philis dans sa jeunesse’ where we have the more intimate ‘Que tu donnois dans ta
jeunesse’.
‘Le Ciel ne te donnoit alors
‘Le Ciel ne te donnoit alors,
Pour tout rang & pour tous Trésors Pour tout rang & pour tout tresor,
Que la douce erreur de ton age,
Que la douce erreur de ton âge;
Deux Tetons que le tendre Amour Deux tetons, que le tendre amour
De sa main arrondit un jour,
Lui-même t’arrondit un jour;
Un cœur tendre, un esprit volage, Un cœur tendre, un esprit volage;
Un Cul, il m’en souvient Philis,
Un cul, j’y pense encor Philis,
Sur qui j’ai vû briller des Lys
Où l’on voïoit briller les lis,
Jaloux de ceux de ton visage.
Jaloux de ceux de ton visage.
Avec tant d’attraits précieux,
Avec tant d’atraits précieux,
Qui n’auroit pas été friponne?
Hélas! qui n’eut été friponne?
Tu le fus objet gracieux
Tu le fus, objet gracieux,
(Et que l’Amour me le pardonne)
Et que l’Amour me le pardonne,
Je crois que je t’en aimai mieux
Tu fais que je t’en aimois mieux.
The other pieces in this scarce collection are ‘Portrait d’un Enfant’ (pp. 1-2);
‘Romance’ (pp. 3-12); ‘Psaphon’ (pp. 13-17); ‘Nouvelle historique en vers’ (pp. 20-23);
‘Marsias. Allegorie’ (pp. 24-27); ‘A Madame de .... a qui l’on avoit donné le nom de
CU-PIE, sur la supposition qu’elle avoit une Fesse blanche, & une noire’ (pp. 27-32);
‘Larisse histoire grecque, traduite du Latin du Theophile Viaut’, preceded by a twopage advertisement (pp. 33-45); ‘Vers Ecrits sur des Tablettes, envoyées par Mlle. P... à
Monsieur B ...’ (p. 46); ‘Vers Donnés à une Demoiselle, au Bal de l’Opera, en l’année
1739’ (p. 47); ‘Madrigal’ (p. 47); ‘Les Pretieuses et les Mulets, Conte’ (p. 48) and ‘L’Y,
Conte’ (p. 48).
Various works by or attributed to Voltaire are bound after the Portefeuille nouveau, all
dated between 1738 and 1742, adding to the internal evidence that the first work is
indeed 1739, as given on the title page, and not 1789, as supposed by ESTC. These
works are:
(1) Voltaire’s Conseils à M. Racine sur son poëme de la Religion, par un amateur de belles-lettres,
[Paris? 1742]. First Edition. Bengesco 1585; BN Voltaire Catalogue 3777 quoting that
Wagnière did not think this was by Voltaire.
(2) Voltaire’s Épîtres sur le bonheur, Paris, Prault, 1738. First edition, containing three
separately paginated parts, ‘De l’Egalité des Conditions’, ‘De la liberté’ and ‘De
l’envie’. Bengesco 608, giving the first two epistles only, saying ‘De l’envie’ appeared
later. BN Voltaire Catalogue 2124, giving all three: ‘Chaque partie a une pagination
particulière ... ainsi qu’à la fin, l’approbation du censeur, datée, pour les deux premières
épîtres, du 1er mars 1738, et, pour la troisième du 28 avril 1738. La second épître
porte, à la fin, la reproduction de l’adresse ‘A Paris, chez Prault fils ... 1738’, ce qui
semble indiquer que les deux premières épîtres ont pu être vendues seules tout
d’abord, avant l’impression de la troisième qui leur est jointe dans cet exemplaire’.
(3) The apocryphal Épître sur l’honneur [s.l.n.d.]. Bengesco 2320; BN Voltaire
Catalogue 5479, stating that the attribution was originally made by Barbier but that this
work appeared in none of the editions of Voltaire’s works.
(4) Anonymous, La Sagesse, Poëme, [s.l.n.d.]. With a final two-page discussion of the
authorship of the poem (not revealed) and its previous publishing history.
ESTC t226483, listing the Bibliothèque Mazarine only; OCLC adds the Institut &
Musée Voltaire.
Not in Bengesco or Voltaire BN Catalogue.
Chinki and the Princess
89. VOLTAIRE, François Marie Arouet de (1694-1778).
LA PRINCESSE DE BABILONE. [Geneva: Cramer.] 1768.
[with:] COYER, Abbé Gabriel-François (1707-1782).
CHINKI, Histoire Cochinchinoise, Qui peut servir à d’autres pays. A Londres, 1768.
FIRST EDITIONS. 8vo, (196 x 114mm), pp. [iv], 182, bound without the final blank, title-page
ornament has a pedestal with a ball on top at far left; with Chinki: pp. 96; Beverlei: pp. viii, 96;
Guerre Civile: pp. xvi, 68, issue with Brimer on p. 56; some browning and dampstaining in text, in
contemporary mottled calf, spine gilt in compartments, red edges, with the bookplate of Lucien
Choudin.
£1000
The first edition of Voltaire’s La Princesse de Babilone, the closest to a fairy tale of all his
contes philosophiques. It tells of the adventures of Formosante, who, having
inconveniently failed to fall in love with the three invited suitors, falls instead for the
shepherd, Amazan before, Candide-like, setting off across the world in pursuit of him.
This first Geneva edition, published by Cramer but without his name on the title-page,
was followed by a storm of editions.
Coyer’s Chinki, Histoire Cochinchinoise is a utopian novel set in the oriental-sounding
imaginary region of Cochinchine. It is a satire on economic institutions and practices,
which Lewis describes as 'a poorly disguised proposal for the improvement of French
society'. A description of the golden age is followed by the rapid decomposition of
society with the appearance of the nobility and the 'maitrise' (or industrial leaders) and
the introduction of tax. Eventually the situation is saved by a good king, who
abolishes feudal laws and restores industry, agriculture and general culture to the levels
of excellence they enjoyed in the golden age. Coyer is said to have drawn ideas from
Simon Clicquot de Blervache's Mémoires sur les corps de métiers, 1758. This is the scarce
first edition (and one of at least five ‘Londres’ imprints of 1768), with an arrangement
of type-ornaments on the title-page and eleven lines of text on p. 96, beginning ‘&
d’autres droits’.
Bound after the two contes philosophiques is the first edition of Béverlei, Tragédie
Bourgeoise, imitée de l’anglois, Paris, 1768, by Bernard-Joseph Saurin (1706-1781), an
adaptation of Edward Moore’s The Gamester, London 1753 (Cioranescu 59510). The
final work in the volume is the first edition of Voltaire’s La Guerre Civile de Geneve, ou les
Amours de Robert Covelle. Poeme Heroique avec des Notes Instructives, A Bezançon [ie
Geneva], chez Nicolas Grandvel. 1768. This is the second issue, with the bookseller’s
name changed from Cramer to Brimer on p. 56 (Cioranescu 64078).
Voltaire, Princesse: OCLC lists Cambridge, Manchester, Oxford, Toronto, Huntington,
Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, Morgan and Texas; BN Voltaire Catalogue 2931;
Bengesco 1492; MMF 68.56; Cioranescu 64356.
Coyer, Chinki: ESTC n15246, listing the Taylorian, BN, Corvey; American
Philosophical Society, Duke, Harvard, NYPL, Newberry and Kansas. MMF 68.23;
Versins p. 210; Lewis p. 47-48; see Cioranescu 21591.
‘more correct than I almost ever saw written by a lady’
90. WHATELEY, Mary, later Darwall (1738-1825).
POEMS ON SEVERAL OCCASIONS. By Mrs. Darwall. (Formerly Miss Whateley).
In two volumes. Vol. I. [-II]. printed by F. Milward; for the Author: And sold by H.
Lowndes, no. 77 Fleet Street. Walsall: 1794.
FIRST EDITION. Two volumes in one, 8vo, (185 x 111mm), pp. [vi], ii, xiv subscribers, [ii]
contents, [i] blank, [i] errata, 118; [vi], tipped-in errata slip, 172, in contemporary sprinkled calf,
head and tail of spine chipped, upper joint cracking, red and black morocco labels lettered and
numbered in gilt.
£2000
The daughter of William Whateley, a gentleman farmer at Beoley in Worcestershire,
Mary Whateley appears to have had little formal education but her love of reading
inspired her to begin writing poetry at an early age, contributing poems to the
Gentleman’s Magazine as early as 1759, under the pseudonym of ‘Harriet Airey’. These,
and a few other poems in manuscript, attracted the attention of some distinguished
contemporaries including William Shenstone, William Woty and John Langhorne, who
set in motion a scheme to publish a volume by subscription, to which Langhorne
contributed some prefatory verses. The result was Miss Whateley’s Original Poems on
several occasions, London, Dodsley, 1764. William Shenstone described her work as
‘written in an excellent and truly classical style; simple, sentimental, harmonious, and
more correct than I almost ever saw written by a lady’ (see Lonsdale, p. 257). The 24
page subscription list contained some 600 names, including Elizabeth Carter, Erasmus
Darwin, Mrs. Delany and one Rev. Mr. J. Darwell, the man Miss Whateley was to
marry. John Darwall, Vicar of Walsall, was also a poet as well as a composer. The
husband and wife together ran a printing press and she wrote songs for his
congregation which he set to music. They also had six children together, to add to his
six from a previous marriage.
The present work, Mary Whateley’s only other publication, is far scarcer than the
1764 Original Poems on Several Occasions. It contains twice as many poems, none of
which appear to have been included in the earlier selection, even though ‘some of the
pieces have been written nearly thirty years’, as the author informs us. In the same
Advertisement, the reader is informed that the poems ‘were the effusions of a mind
generally occupied in the domestic duties’, a casual understatement from the mother
of twelve. The poems themselves throw an interesting light on the working mother,
as resonant today as then. The poem, ‘On the Author’s Husband desiring her to Write
Some Verses’ (II, 55) follows the progression from denial (’I’ve far too much on my
plate’) to the recovery of independent thought and inspiration, where the poet gains
ascendancy over the mother, only to have imagination shattered, not by the man from
Porlock, but by the baby in the nursery:
‘Verses, my Love! as soon cou’d I
Without a wing or feather fly:
My head, with other matters fraught,
No more attempts poetic thought ...
Ye Muses, aid me to explore
The shadowy grots, and mountain’s hoar ...
Erato hears my invocation, My bosom glows with inspiration, Instant the fairy scenes appear,
Pierian sounds salute my ear:Connubial Love! enchanting theme!
Sweet subject for my muse-rapt dream ...
---- But hark! - my darling infant cries,
And each poetic fancy flies.’
The second volume contains several poems, each marked with asterisks, supplied by
‘two young friends’ of the author. It has been suggested that one of these ‘young
friends’ might be Mary Darwall’s daughter, Elizabeth, who later published The Storm,
with other Poems, 1810, which contains a poem addressed to her by her mother.
Not in Jackson, Romantic Poetry by Women or Johnson, Provincial Poetry 1789-1839. See
Roger Lonsdale, Eighteenth Century Women Poets, pp. 256-262.
ESTC t124893, at BL, National Library of Wales, Bodleian, Duke, Chicago, Illinois
and Yale only.
finally out of the closet ... anonymity and the novel
91. WHITFIELD, Henry (1776-1816).
A PICTURE FROM LIFE: or, the History of Emma Tankerville and Sir Henry
Moreton ... By Henry Whitfield, M.A. In two volumes. Vol. I [-II]. printed for S.
Highley, (Successor to the late Mr. John Murray) no. 24, Fleet Street. London: 1804.
FIRST EDITION. Two volumes, 12mo, (193 x 112mm), pp. xxii, [ii], 228; viii, 232, with the
half-title in each volume, uncut throughout, in the original blue drab boards, paper spine, worn at
extremities, lettered by hand and priced 8/- on the front of the first volume, stencilled ownership
inscription on the front flyleaf of each volume ‘Goodford, Trin. Coll. Cam.’.
£3000
A lovely unsophisticated copy of a rare novel. Set against the backdrop of the
Napoleonic Wars, this is a novel of manners made up of kidnappings and duels,
gamblers and bandits, politicians and London society. The action begins with a
masquerade ball at which the great and the good of Georgian London are present,
though slightly disguised in the manner of a roman à clef, from the Prince of Wales to
Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who is shadowed by the Jewish moneylender to whom he
is in debt. The hero, Sir Henry Moreton, is forced into exile in Germany following a
duel in defence of Emma Tankerville’s honour. While they are separated, he fends off
the attentions of a forthright Italian countess and she those of a number of suitors,
from her rakish cousin to a doggerel poet. After a number of adventures on the
Continent, Emma is kidnapped near Vienna but is daringly rescued. While the
characters of the novel are abroad, the author takes the opportunity to discuss a
number of revolutionary ideas and their possible consequences.
91. Whitfield
There is a particularly interesting introduction in which Whitfield discusses the
origins and current standing of the novel. Starting with Boccaccio, as the father of
modern Romance, he speaks of Romance as ‘beautiful, animated, lovely, often
humorous, but generally serious’ but dealt a ‘death-blow’ by Cervantes. He goes on to
speak of the phoenix that arose from her ashes: ‘her youthful daughter’, the novel.
‘Among many vulgar errors, perhaps there is not one more prevalent or dangerous
than this: “That Novels are unworthy the attention of men of any education or literary
acquirements;” I could wish that such trifles, as they are frequently called, were rated
higher. The daily demands for them from those accommodating caterers of the
public, the Proprietors of Circulating Libraries, prove that they are entertaining ...
While the French can boast the writings of Le Sage (if revolutionary prepossession will
permit them to bestow praises on works written while kings were on their thrones) we
can produce the stories of Fielding, Smollet, Goldsmith, Moore; and the pleasing
novels of the fair writer of Evelina, Cecilia, and Camilla. It has always been my
humble opinion, that the pathetic Fielding knew best the doctrine of the passions; and
the witty Smollet that of human action’ (Preface, pp. v-x).
Henry Whitfield was the author of a number of novels, the last and first of which
were published at the Minerva Press. His first novel, Villeroy; or, the Fatal Moment,
London, W. Lane, 1790, was given on the title page as being written ‘by a Lady’; the
present work is the first of Whitfield’s novels to bear his name. Following the general
discussion of novels in the preface, there is a three-page section, called ‘introduction’,
being a dialogue between the author and his friend on the subject of publishing a
novel under his name. ‘I do not see any good reason to the contrary’, he writes,
having previously published four novels anonymously, ‘Other authors have prefixed
their real names to their own works. Besides, there is an instance of one having been
robbed by not doing it ... The maker of Cricket Bats modestly puts his name to the end
of his works, and is a cause of many good hits; for his Cricket Balls come off with flying
colours, in a sublime, but very irregular manner. Even the Cutler has his name on the
blades of his works, and makes a most splendid appearance; while his talents for
sharpness, penetration, and his good temper, are loudly commended’ (pp. xv-xvi).
This focusing on the identity of the author is particularly interesting given not only
Whitfield’s previous anonymity but his previous use of the ‘by a Lady’ sales pitch. His
second novel, Sigismar, 1799, has in the form of an advertisement a wonderful flight of
fancy in which the disguised male novelist sets out his perception of the female
novelist’s sensibilities, in describing ‘her’ mock horror when ‘her’ second novel was
being returned from ‘a conspicuous publisher of novels’ (Lane?) for being ‘too moral
for the females of the present day. A glow of indignation suffused my cheek - the
honour of my sex became concerned - and I determined to prove on what foundation
so degrading an opinion was built: happily for my purpose a third bookseller to whom
it was sent, either thought more favourably of the delicate part of the creation, or had
the temerity to oppose its prejudice’.
Most of Whitfield’s novels seem to have been fairly well received. Sigismar, London
1799 drew mixed praise: ’it has evidently been the aim of the author, throughout, to
improve the morals, as well as to amuse the fancy. We should hope, however, that
there are so few females of so depraved a cast as one of the principal characters’
(MM); it was followed by Geraldwood, London 1801; Leopold; or the Bastard, London
1803; But Which? or, Domestic Grievances of the Wolmore Family, London 1807 and Early
Feuds; or Fortune’s Frolics, London, Minerva Press, 1816. A second edition of the
present novel followed in 1808.
Garside, Raven & Schöwerling 1804:70; Block, p. 322; Summers p. 464.
OCLC lists BL, Bancroft, UCLA, Yale and Illinois.
92. WILD, Robert (1609-1679).
ITER BOREALE, with large Additions of several other Poems being an Exact
Collection of all hitherto Extant. Never before Published together. The Author R.
Wild, D.D. Printed for the Booksellers in London, [London] 1668.
Fourth Edition; First Complete Edition. Small 8vo, (140 x 87mm), pp. [3]-122, [4] table,
in contemporary sheep, blind-ruled, early manuscript paper label, with the ownership inscription of
John Drinkwater, dated 1920, on a preliminary blank, with later booklabel of Michael Curtis
Phillips, wanting the pastedowns and the endpapers but with the initial and final blank leaves (A1
and O8 ‘blank and genuine’), some light scuffing on boards but a lovely copy.
£3500
A wonderfully fresh copy in a well-preserved contemporary binding: from the
collection of Richard Jennings, whose books were noted for their spectacular
condition. Robert Wild was a Puritan divine and a royalist, whose occasional
licentious tone and reputation for ‘irregular wit’ was said to have so worried Wild’s
friend Richard Baxter that he paid his friend a special visit with the intention of
rebuking him, only to be reassured after listening to Wild’s thoroughly sound, puritan
sermon. The title poem of this collection was hugely popular, first published on St.
George’s day in the year of Charles II’s Restoration, under the title Iter Boreale,
attempting something upon the Successul and Matchless March of the Lord General Lord Monck
from Scotland to London, London 1660 as ‘By a rural pen’. Dryden, who in contrast
called Wild ‘the Wither of the City’, described the excitement with which the poem
was received in London: ‘I have seen them reading it in the midst of ‘Change so
vehemently that they lost their bargains by their candles’ ends’.
Other poems included here are ‘The Norfolk and Wisbech Cock-Fight’, ‘Upon
some Bottles of Sack and Claret’, a satire on the politics of Nathaniel Lee, ‘The
Recantation of a Penitent Proteus; or the Changling’, ‘The Fair Quarrel, by way of
Letter, between Mr. Wanley, a Son of the Church; and Dr. Wilde, a Non-conformist’
and a number of ballads and elegies. Not an uncommon book, fairly well-held
institutionally, though the new edition of Wing does not locate copies in the British
Library, Yale or Harvard (although each of these does have a variant, with pp. 120 of
text as opposed to pp. 122 as here). This is a fabulous copy in a modest contemporary
binding from the library of Richard Jennings: the copy exhibited in the Hayward’s
1947 exhibition.
Hayward, English Poetry, no. 121 (this copy); Grolier 976; Wing W2136.
93. [WREN.]
THE WREN; or, the Fairy of the Green-House, consisting of Song, Story and
Dialogue. Founded upon actual Incidents, and put together for the Amusement and
Instruction of three little Boys during the Confinement of their Mother. printed and
sold by John Marshall and Co. at No. 4, Aldermary Church Yard, in Bow-Lane.
London: 1787.
FIRST EDITION. 12mo (102 x 84mm), frontispiece wood engraving by John Lee, on front paste-
down, pp. [3]-76, [3] advertisements, with twelve woodcut oval vignettes in the text, the introductory
leaf (p. 7) bound very close, the initial and terminal leaves serving as paste-downs, small ownership
inscription scribbled through at the foot of the title-page, some light browning and dust-soiling, in the
original Dutch gilt floral boards, colours still bright, extremities a little bumped, covers slightly worn,
tape repair to spine.
£3000
The scarce first edition of a charming series of moral stories for children in verse.
Three little boys, Harry, George and Jerry, are kept entertained during their mother’s
confinement by the little wren who lives in the green-house. This little bird acts as
their moral guide, either rewarding them or punishing them (with the assistance of
their father) for their behaviour. They are given ‘good’ or ‘naughty’ cards according to
their due, the good bearing a picture of the little wren, who will bring a plum with her
and sing her prettiest song for the child who has behaved well and the naughty card
bearing the picture of pig: ‘He does nothing he’s told, / Will fret, quarrel and scold, /
And Pig’s company must be his cure’. The wren guides the children with stories, such
as the boy who loses his kite in the trees: ‘By what happen’d to your Kite / Learn the
ills you would derive, / If, like it, in luckless plight, / You were left at large to drive.’
The text is accompanied by a frontispiece and a dozen oval illustrations in the text,
engraved on wood by John Lee (d. 1804). Most of these are scenes depicting the three
little boys in action, flying a kite, setting a mouse-trap and climbing the mulberry-tree
without consent to scoff the ripe fruit. Below the imprint the two available prices for
the book are given: four-pence in gilt paper, as here or seven pence in red leather. The
final advertisement leaves are dominated by works by Dorothy and Mary Kilner, John
Marshall’s best-selling children’s authors. A note in the Osborne catalogue says that
the work was reprinted in 1843 with a preface by the author’s son, but it does not give
the author’s name. ESTC gives three later editions printed by Marshall, all scarce and
with minor variations (ESTC n25506, between 1790 and 1800, at Cleveland Public
Library, Pierpont Morgan, Toronto and Melbourne; ESTC t188762, 1795?, at
Birmingham and UCLA; ESTC t177732, between 1796 and 1800, at Cambridge only.)
ESTC t120217, at BL, Bodleian (2 copies), Indiana and Melbourne only.
Osborne I, p. 87.