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An attractive copy of a scarce edition of this major political essay by Quevedo, first published in 1626. This edition is published by the same Confraternity of St. John the Evangelist who also published an edition of his works in the same year.
‘The treatise attempts to establish the theoretical groundwork for a governmental system based on Christian ideals. The best form of government, according to Quevedo, is a monarchy, one whose authority is absolute because it issues from divine will. The king should govern using Christ as his supreme model. Much attention is paid to the qualities required of the king’s counselors, they being probably as important as the king himself. Quevedo rejects tyrannicide as the solution for an evil monarch, choosing instead to present the latter as a form of divine punishment which must be suffered in silence. The work contains few truly original ideas, its significance stemming principally from the mastery of its style as well as the great popularity it achieved’ (Bleiberg, Dictionary of the Literature of the Iberian Peninsula, II, p. 1336).

The scarce first German edition of Helen Maria Williams’ most overtly political translation and her single most controversial work. The letters of Louis XVI were obtained in good faith by Williams, who hoped to use her translation and commentary for the transmission of her own revolutionary beliefs. The enterprise turned out to be a massive error of judgement on her part as the public reaction was overwhelmingly that of sympathy for the unjustly treated king, quite the opposite to the effect she had intended. Worse than this, however, was the public and official outcry that greeted its publication. Almost immediately people began to doubt the authenticity of the letters and Williams was subject to a barrage of humiliating attacks. The first blow was that the work was confiscated by the authorities for fear of its royalist sympathies and this was followed by endless attacks, most notably a full-length vitriolic tirade by Bertrand de Moleville, A Refutation of the Libel on the Memory of the late King of France, published by Helen Maria Williams under the title of Political and Confidential Correspondence of Louis XVI translated from the original manuscript by R. C. Dallas, London, 1804. Bertrand de Moleville was unrestrained in his criticism both of the present and other works and of Williams herself, whom he famously described as 'a woman whose lips and pen distil venom'.
After years of suspicion and controversy, it transpired that the letters were indeed forgeries. Williams had purchased them from François Babié de Bercenay and Sulpice Imbert, Comte de la Platière and had herself been convinced that they were genuine. In 1822, however, Babié de Bercenay revealed in a letter that he had written the letters at the suggestion of his friend Sulpice Imbert. Williams, the innocent translator, had unwittingly been implicated in a literary hoax. Such was the humiliation she suffered after the publication that Williams retired from literary life and very little is heard of her over the next ten years.
‘Were it not for Babié’s revelation in 1820, we may never have known the actual history of Williams’s set of the Louis XVI letters. With its historical (mis)representation deriving from a non-original (in a sense) original, does Williams’s text prove an ambiguous artefact? However, the work exists as a testament to the importance of her translational oeuvre in its position in the canon as a contribution to her revolutionary communication and, in a secondary sense, as an intriguing example of the pseudotranslational subgenre’ (Paul Hague, Helen Maria Williams: the purpose and practice of translation, 1789-1827, 2015, pp. 126).
The letters in the original were given in French and English, with Williams’ commentary given only in English. In this edition, the entire text is given only in German.

A delightful copy of the scarce first German edition of Fordyce’s Sermons. First published as Sermons to Young Women in 1766, the work was an enormous publishing success and became a symbol of proper reading-matter for young ladies. Highly conservative in nature - criticised by Wollstonecraft as insulting to women - Fordyce’s tracts encourage a meek femininity in women and suggest that they should stick strictly to their own domain. The reading of novels came in for particular condemnation: ‘What shall we say of certain books, which we are assured (for we have not read them) are in their nature so shameful... can it be true that any young woman, pretending to decency, should endure for a moment to look on this infernal brood of futility and lewdness?’. This passage threw the gauntlet down to novelists for years afterwards and the work became a byword for dull propriety. In Sheridan’s The Rivals, Lydia Languish ostentatiously leaves a copy of it lying around while she hides her illicit reading material under the cushions and in Pride and Prejudice, Mr Collins famously subjects the sisters to a reading from it, much to another Lydia’s outspoken irritation.
This is a fabulous copy in contemporary German bindings of green goatskin. The bindings are distinctively gilt with a flamboyant rococo design and were presumably commissioned for presentation. Both volumes are dated at the foot of the spine, ‘M.v.A. den 17 Februar 1774’. Two further editions of this German translation were published in Leipzig, in 1768 and 1774 and are similarly scarce.

A fabulously illustrated Dutch children’s almanac, with a series of hand-coloured engraved plates on children’s games and street cries. An important strand of children’s education in the Netherlands, Willem Houtgraaff started publishing his famous children’s almanacs in 1795. The present one, for the year 1799, starts with information on eclipses, a calendar, the price of rentals of houses and ships, and the costs of posts. This more traditional almanac information takes up the first part of the work, pp. 1-15, and is followed by a gallery of street cries, pp. 1-15, where the illustrations are interleaved with text in the form of poems describing the activities. These fall approximately into two types: the street seller, such as the seller of mousetraps, ink and umbrellas (a recent innovation), and the children’s pastimes, such as playing with pets, throwing marbles, flying a bird on a string or playing palette, a game involving bats and shuttlecocks. Also featured are the bagpipe player, various farmer workers and a lemon and apple seller. At the conclusion of the almanac are three short moral tales.

An important plea for religious tolerance based on the study of demographics and the writings of Malthus. Following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and the persecution of protestants, the mass exodus of some 8% of the population had far-reaching consequences. About 100,000 French people left the country, exporting about 60 million livres, which had crippled French commerce, at the same time as augmenting foreign economies and armies. Turmeau de la Morandière stresses the cumulative dangers arising from this depopulation and concludes that the revocation itself was ‘trop étendu, trop sévère, trop précipité dans certaines de ses dispositions’, that it led to hardship in France and prosperity in England, Germany and Holland (I., 157). He argues that the only remedy for France is to adopt a policy of religious tolerance and to allow the protestants to return to France. His reasoning is economic more than humanitarian and is based principally on an an assumed link between increase in population and economic prosperity.
Turmeau de la Morandière is also credited with a rare treatise on the prostitutes of Paris, 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. His focus in this treatise is with the demographic problems 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 first edition was published in Paris by Valleyre in the same year. To begin with it was published anonymously but the author’s name was added at some point in the printing process and copies exist with the author’s name in the either or both volumes. This Amsterdam edition is anonymous in both parts. Cioranescu lists only a later edition of 1768.

An elegant society novel by an obscure Scottish writer, author of at least one other novel, Geraldine, or Modes of Faith and Practice, London 1820. Private Life, a readable tale of the rising middle class and a young woman’s experience of it, enjoyed considerable popularity, running to second and third editions (in 1830 and 1835) as well as a New York edition of 1829.

A delightful anonymous work in which narratives and philosophical digression are happily mixed. Consisting of a total of eight ‘Promenades’, each of which is loosely intended to elucidate one aspect of human passion. In the author’s brief introduction, he laments that the only explanation for the prevailing morality and behaviour is that men have become children. ‘La plûpart des hommes ont aujourd’hui abandonné les lectures sérieuses & instructives, parce que l’application qu’elles demandent, se trouve absolument incompatible, avec l’esprit de volupté qui les domine’ (Préface de l’Auteur, p. iii).
In the first Promenade, Monsieur de Clairenville meets a knight of Malta and falls into conversation with him. The knight tells him of his aventures, including the tragic story of the beautiful Sophie. The second Promenade, subtitled ‘Sur les Passions’, contains an essay on the education of youth and a tale about a young Paris lawyer. The third Promenade, ‘Sur l’Usage des Passions’, includes a prayer to Saint Christopher, a discussion of Jesuits and monks and a section on Reason. The fourth is ‘Sur l’Amour’, with reflections and a story of a young lady who could not cure herself of this malady. The fifth, ‘Sur la Colère’, gives the history of Leonore and Olympia. The sixth Promenade provides a discussion of Avarice, with a strange miscellany of reflections on France, trade in Mississippi and John Law, concluding with ‘Histoire curieuse d’un Avare, qui avoit beaucoup gagné au Mississipi’. Seven is Ambition, with the tale of a persecuted cleric and eight is Hatred, which begins with a conversation between Monsieur de Clairenville and a Carmelite, outlines the author’s general system for understanding this passion and concludes with the final story, ‘Histoire de la Comtesse de.... les excès où elle se porte pour satisfaire sa Haine contre son Mari’.
First published in 1723 (see Jones p. 35) under the slightly different title of Promenades de Mr. de Clairenville, and then republished in 1743 and the present edition under the present title. It was republished in the first volume of the Bibliothèque universelle des romans, April 1782. Despite its evident popularity, with three editions spanning a number of years, this unusual work is now very scarce.

An excellent copy of this charming poetical miscellany, known as the 'Recueil de Barbin' and first published in 1692. It contains the major poems of Ronsard, Villon, Marot, du Bellay and Baïf, as well as a host of minor poems by these and numerous less well-known authors. This expanded version (the original was in five volumes) is one of two printings of the collection in the eighteenth century, both published in 1752, reflecting an interesting resurgence in the study of early French poetry. The miscellany is arranged in six volumes, by author, with a brief biographical notice on each poet. The biographies are ascribed to Fr. Barbin, son of Claude Barbin, the great bookseller who first published the collection. This copy has a good provenance, coming from the de Guillebon family, with contemporary heraldic bookplates and a later booklabel of Madame Guillebon, the younger, circa 1800.

'Une anthologie de la poésie française faite par les classiques éveille l'intérêt; de plus elle a connu un grand succès... On ne saurait exagérer son influence' (p. 109, _Dictionnaire des Lettres Françaises, Fayard, 1996).

Gay III 978.

An important work, edited by Holbach, and first published in 1761, Boulanger's Recherches sur l'Origine du Despotisme Oriental was intended as an introduction and key to Montesquieu's Esprit des Loix. An important and widely-read treatise, it was incorporated in shortened form in the Encyclopédie, under the title 'Oeconomie politique'. It is offered here complete with the first edition of its companion volume, the so-called continuation by Boulanger, entitled Dissertation sur Elie et Enoch. The two volumes are uniformly bound and the second work comes complete with both the half-titles, the 'Dissertations' half-title and the additional half-title which links it to the Recherches, this latter being more often discarded. Included also in this volume (pp. 159-216) is Benjamin Stillingfleet's Traité Mathématique sur le Bonheur with an introductory letter by the translator, Etienne de Silhouette.

One of Beckford’s most readable and entertaining works, his Recollections of an Excursion to the Monasteries of Alcobaça and Batalha is an idealised compression of several visits to Portugal into one single twelve-day journey, based on diary notes made during a visit in 1794 - a trip during which he did not actually visit Batalha at all. However, it was his visits to Batalha which enchanted him and which inspired him in his designs for Fonthill Abbey, even though his impressions were not published until so many years after the event.
‘[Beckford’s] Recollections of an Excursion to the Monasteries of Alcobaça and Batalha is a charming, heavily humorous concoction... some biographers rate this short piece as his finest writing, and it is indeed a delightful evocation of a lost world, authentic in detail even if contrived in construction’ (Timothy Mowl, William Beckford: Composing for Mozart, 1998, pp. 217-300).
This copy has a piece of leather missing from the top of the spine, which rather mars its looks. Curiously, it contains an amusing piece of its history in the quotation sheet from a previous sale which is loosely inserted. ‘This is the best I have been able to find so far’, writes John Lyle, New and Second-hand Bookseller, to P. O’R. Smiley, Esq, of Victoria House, Ampleforth, Yorks. ‘Indeed, the only one. If you wish me to buy it for you, please reply at once to make sure of securing it’. Evidently, Philip O’Riordan, who was Head of Classics at Ampleforth College, replied in time to secure the volume, as it bears his booklabel. It set him back the princely sum of £3 post free.

One of Beckford’s most readable and entertaining works, his Recollections of an Excursion to the Monasteries of Alcobaça and Batalha is an idealised compression of several visits to Portugal into one single twelve-day journey, based on diary notes made during a visit in 1794 - a trip during which he did not actually visit Batalha at all. However, it was his visits to Batalha which enchanted him and which inspired him in his designs for Fonthill Abbey, even though his impressions were not published until so many years after the event.
‘[Beckford’s] Recollections of an Excursion to the Monasteries of Alcobaça and Batalha is a charming, heavily humorous concoction... some biographers rate this short piece as his finest writing, and it is indeed a delightful evocation of a lost world, authentic in detail even if contrived in construction’ (Timothy Mowl, William Beckford: Composing for Mozart, 1998, pp. 217-300).

A fabulous copy of this scarce account of seventeenth-century French politics, extra-illustrated by Renouard and bound by Simier. Listed by Renouard under ‘Histoire’, the anonymous text is by Gatien Courtilz de Sandras, the popular novelist most remembered for his memoirs of d’Artagnan and his tales of adventure and derring-do under the administrations of Richelieu and Mazarin.
Antoine-August Renouard (1765-1853) was an industrialist and political activist who turned his attention to bibliography and bookselling after the Thermidore coup of 1794. An avid collector and bibliographer of Aldine and Estienne editions, Renouard swiftly gained a reputation for collecting fine books, both illustrated and handsomely bound. The present example, extra-illustrated and in a fine signed binding, is an excellent example of Renouard’s taste. Internally the work is a little browned and has seen some restoration but the twelve additional portraits are in good condition and the binding fresh.

A very handsome copy of the first edition of one of Horace Smith’s popular historical novels. In 1812, after the rebuilding of the Drury Lane Theatre, the managers offered a prize of £50 for an address to be recited at the opening. Together with his elder brother James, Horace wrote parodies of poets of the day which were then published as supposedly failed entries for the competition. Horace’s own entries included parodies of Byron, Moore, Scott and Bowles while James parodied Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge and Crabbe. The resultant Rejected Addresses, which was published in 1812, was hugely popular and is still acclaimed as one of the most brilliant parodies of English poets. Smith enjoyed a wide circle of friendships, most particularly including Leigh Hunt and Shelley, with whom he entered numerous poetry competitions; he also helped Shelley to manage his finances.
In 1818, Smith took part with Shelley in a sonnet-writing competition on the subject of the Nile River, inspired by Diodorus Siculus and submitted to The Examiner. Both poets wrote sonnets called ‘Ozymandias’: Shelley’s was published on 11th January 1818 under the pseudonym Glirastes and Smith’s was published on 1st February 1818 under the initials H.S. Smith later renamed his sonnet ‘On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below’ and it was published in his collection Amarynthus.
Shelley’s sonnet is well known to all but here for fun we reproduce Horace Smith’s:
‘In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows.
"I am great Ozymandias," saith the stone,
"The King of kings: this mighty city shows
The wonders of my hand." The city's gone!
Naught but the leg remaining to disclose
The sight of that forgotten Babylon.
We wonder, and some hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when through the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the wolf in chase,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What wonderful, but unrecorded, race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.’
Alongside his literary output, which included poetry and several novels strongly influenced by Walter Scott, Horace Smith was a stockbroker. Shelley said of him: ‘Is it not odd that the only truly generous person I ever knew who had money enough to be generous with should be a stockbroker? He writes poetry and pastoral dramas and yet knows how to make money, and does make it, and is still generous’.

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 Huntingtower 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).

A scarce pirated edition of the Abbé Raynal’s popular work which ran to several editions in 1781, many of which bear the ‘Londres’ imprint. In the present case, the Londres imprint is probably false; ESTC suggests a French or Dutch printing.

One of two known editions of this charming little book of ‘Walks’, or conversations, both editions undated, both provincial (the other is printed in Coventry, ‘by and for Pratt, Smith & Lesson) and both held at the British Library only.
Made up of 8 Walks and a Conclusion, the work recounts the nature rambles and conversations of the Smith family: the respectable Mr and Mrs Smith their two children, William, aged 10 and Mary, aged 8, together with a visiting nephew, Thomas, a boy of a weak constitution sent to the country for his health. Mr and Mrs Smith had retired ‘from the bustle of a very lucrative business’, to live in the West of England, where they dedicate themselves to leisure and the education of their children.
The curiosity and antics of the children in the course of the walks prompt adult explanations on subjects ranging from the cruelty of stealing birds’ nests, to astronomy, the propagation of flowers, ploughing and sewing wheat, and details on the life cycles and habits of butterflies, swallows, rooks and many other creatures. Country pastimes such as maypole dancing are described and some commentary given on social hierarchies of the past: ‘That is, my dear child, a Castle, where formerly some great Lord resided, who then had a sovereign power over his tenants, whom he used to force to fight for him in his quarrels, but happily for us, those days of ignorance and slavery are gone, and the poor enjoy the same common privileges with the rich’ (Walk V, pp. 28-29). The final walk has the children returning home to admire his uncles ‘feathered tribes’, which include hens, swans and a peacock, and to wander around his hot house where he grows grapes, melons and pineapples.
The woodcut frontispiece depicts a may day scene with children skipping around the maypole and creating an unlikely configuration of ribbons. The text includes delightful woodcut illustrations depicting scenes such as sheep shearing, the milkmaid milking a cow, the ploughman at work, a carriage with a gloomy castle and the father showing the children his greenhouse.

A delightful volume of verse psalms and hymns printed in the small city of Crema, near to Milan. An elegant production, with wide margins, the text is followed by the musical score for each of the psalms and hymns, with music by the popular composers Giuseppe Gazzaniga (1743-1818), musical director of Crema Cathedral and Stefano Pavesi (1779-1850), another local Crema composer, mainly of operas. Tadini prefaces the volume with an essay on music and poetry (pp. 3-23), printed in two columns. Poet and musician, Luigi Tadini created a centre of the arts in his beautiful Palazzo Tadini in Lovere, on the shores of Lake Iseo. It still thrives today as the Accademia Tadini, with a music school and prestigious Tadini International Music Competition.

A charming set of nineteenth century manuscript riddles. Compiled presumably for personal entertainment, these neatly written and carefully indexed cards provide inspiration for all of us newly becoming accustomed to providing our own entertainment in Lockdown. Turn off Netflix and compile a card index system of riddles!

21. Why is a Fender like Westminster Abbey? - It contains the ashes of the Great.
25. Why is a Man who has not paid for his wig, like a spendthrift? ‘Over head and ears in debt’.

The original work included a total of 182 riddles but in this set set Card X is missing, which would have had riddles 94-98 on the verso and 109-111 on the recto. This leaves a total of 174 riddles to entertain and instruct the reader. The answers to each of the missing riddles is present in the original answer sheet, so the challenge to our readers is to complete the set.

The answers to the missing Riddles are as follows:

94. ‘It can a tail unfold’
95. ‘Murmur’
96. ‘B. R. and G.’
97. ‘He has been kidnapping’
109. ‘Misfortune’
110. ‘Blush’
111. ‘Equal’

Provenance, by repute, Lathbury, Suffolk.

A lovely copy of this scarce novel by the Comte de Caylus, first published in 1742. An aristocratic dilettante, Caylus was a popular novelist and writer of short stories or contes badines - ranging from fairy tales to sentimental intrigue and oriental fables - which are always witty and usually slightly disreputable. Alongside this reflection of his place in the gayest circles of Paris society, Caylus was also a great collector of art and antiquities, a scholar and connoisseur, painter, etcher and patron of contemporary artists. His major work of scholarship, Recueil d’antiquités égyptiennes, étrusques, grecques, romaines et gauloises, is increasingly recognised for its significant importance in the development of modern archaeology.
Soirées du Bois de Boulogne is a loosely entwined collection of six short stories, or ‘soirées’, set in an apartment near the Bois de Boulogne where the hero, the comte de Trémaillé, has been sent to recover his health after an injury sustained at the Battle of Clausen. After happily spending a week there taking the air in the park and content with his books for company, early one morning he is surprised to see a carriage arriving at his door, with several ladies and a large entourage. Discussing their recent histories and swapping stories of unhappy liaisons, his companions, who include English visitors as well as French compatriots, decide to narrate to one another the stories of their lives. The names have of course, as the dedication makes clear, been changed.
The first story, which has for title ‘Histoire du Commandeur Hautpré’, begins with a summary of all the romantic novels he had been reading which had determined him to find his Angélique or his Clorinde. The second story is told by the young Englishwoman, Madame de Rockfields, who, after complaining about being forced to entertain them in a foreign language, insists that her story will have nothing about convents in it. ‘In France’, she says, ‘it is always about convents’. The Marquis de Montgeüil follows, and tells the audience of his going into Spain, ‘la Patrie du Roman’, narrating the ‘Histoire de l’Abbé de Longuerive’. The second volume begins with the fourth soirée, ‘Histoire du Comte de Prémaillé’ which tells of his love for the beautiful Constance and of her being sent to a convent. The fifth story gives the ‘Histoire du Comte de Crémailles’, including the correspondence between the unhappy fugitive, Mlle de Vauxfleurs, and an Abbess (more convents...). The final story is another English one, ‘Histoire de Mylord Wynghton’, a tragic tale which hurtles from the birth of the French court of the exiled James II and the birth of his son, the Old Pretender, to the political turbulence of the hero’s homeland - ‘L’Angleterre le pays du monde le plus fertile en Mécontens’ - where the hero and Dorothy fall in love but through a series of disasters and misunderstandings, mistaken identities, unforgiving parents, spells in Newgate and galleys bound for America, Dorothy takes her own life and dies in her lover’s arms in the final ‘sanglante Catastrope’.

A charming copy of this collection of erotic epigrams, engraved throughout in a delicate script and accompanied by a handsome frontispiece. This is the first of two companion volumes to the original La légende joyeuse, first published in 1749, with Seconde suite de la Légende Joyeuse following in 1751. The epigrams are by several authors, including Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, Ferrand, Grécourt and Piron. Gay says of the style of poetry: ‘Pour citer une de ces petites pièces nous sommes bien embarrassé, car elles sont généralement fort libres’. In keeping with this, it is worth noting that the imprint gives the publisher as ‘Pyne’, a double reference to the French slang for penis and the English publisher John Pine, whose 1733 Horace remained one of the most famous fully-engraved books of the time.