Search

An attractive copy of a scarce English edition of the complete fairy tales by Madame d’Aulnoy. First published in 1697 as Contes des Fées, with another volume appearing in 1698 under the title Les Contes nouveau, she wrote some thirty stories in all, some of which, like ‘L’Oiseau bleu’ and ‘Le Chatte blanche’ have become classics. Numerous editions of her works have been published since with varying degrees of completeness. All eighteenth century editions in French and English (as of course the original late seventeenth century French editions) are now pretty scarce and as they were well read, they are seldom found in good condition. Despite a few minor scuffs, this is a handsome copy in contemporary tree calf.
'Comment concilier l'aventureuse existence de cette virago sans scrupules', asks René Herval, 'avec le délicieux talent de l'auteur des Contes de Fées … car il est indéniable que le même esprit qui médita la perte du baron d'Aulnoy a créé une oeuvre qui l'emporte même sur celle de Perrault' (qv. Dictionnaire des Lettres Françaises XVII, pp. 86-87).
There were a number of early editions of the English text of Aulnoy’s Contes des fées, which was first published in English in 1721 (ESTC lists NLW, Bodleian, Harvard, Miami and Clark). Editions followed in 1722 (Bodleian, Penn); 1728 (BL, Worcester Oxford, Newberry, Illinois, Michigan, Penn, Yale and National Library of Australia); 1737 (Edinburgh University, NLW, Harvard and New York University); 1749 (Cleveland Public, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, UCLA and Clark); 1749 (Princeton, Alberta, UCLA).

A delightful illustrated essay on quadrupeds by the fifteen year old Gerrit Lodewijk Hendrik Hooft, who later entered politics and served as burgomaster of the Hague from 1843 to 1858. In a brief preface, Hooft sets out his reasoning for undertaking this project: that of all the qualities of the many animals in creation - such as the eyesight of an eagle able to spot a lamb from way up high - only man has a soul and has the ability to study and understand them in order to praise God for their creation. The realisation of this ‘agreeable duty’ has led him to decide to spend his leisure hours putting together this project in the hopes that it will bring pleasure to his parents:
‘Convaincu de ce devoir agréable, j’ai intention d’employer mes heures de loisir a faire une courte description des proprietés particulieres des quadrupedes; en y ajoutant les animaux mêmes dessinés en encre de Chine. -- Je ne doute que mes chers Parents n’applaudissent à ce dessein et c’est dans cette douce esprance que je me dis avec respect leur obeissant fils, G.L.H. Hooft’.
The manuscript is charmingly illustrated and shows Hooft to have been an accomplished artist for his age: there are eleven pen and ink drawings of quadrupeds in a variety of landscape settings. The animals included are mostly domestic animals: bulls, cows, horses, donkeys, sheep, rams, goats (does and bucks), angora goats, pigs and wild boar. In each case, the most notable characteristics of the animal are given below the drawing. The illustrations are simply but strikingly framed with a yellow wash between single ruled lines. The title page is illustrated in a different style, with a monument bearing the date, 1794, and an inscription from Genesis: ‘Dieu vit tout ce qu’il avait fait, et voilà il était très bon’; the monument is topped with an urn and is set in a landscape filled with domestic and exotic animals, including a lion in the foreground. Facing the title-page is an 8 line stanza of a poem, beginning ‘Arrêtez-vous mes yeux! contemplez les merveilles de ce Dieu’.

A lovely copy of a rare edition of this famous imaginary voyage, first published in 1727 as The Hermit; or, the Unparalled Sufferings and Surprising Adventures of Mr Philip Quarll, an Englishman. Who was lately discovered by Mr Dorrington, a Bristol Merchant, upon an uninhabited island in the South Sea, where he has lived above fifty years, London, 1727. The first of a storm of French editions was published by Jean Daniel Beman in Rotterdam in 1728 and it was included in the fourth volume of Garnier’s Voyages imaginaires, 1787.
Considered to be one of the best of the English imitations of Robinson Crusoe, The English Hermit was staggeringly popular, not only in England, but throughout Europe and in America. Alternately attributed to Edward Dorrington and Alexander Bicknell, the identity of the author remained unknown until Arundell Esdaile discovered a rare edition in which the dedication was signed ‘Peter Longueville’. His hypothesis was that Longueville, angered by the publishers’ alteration of his original and their invention of Edward Dorrington, privately published his own edition in which he denounced the false changes.
Dottin described this once seminal work as a ‘genre hybride - à mi-chemin entre le récit d’aventures philosophiques et le conte de fées’. Its popularity as an adventure story is woven into the fabric of literature: George Crabbe ranked it with the Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress as books to be found in rural homes, while Thomas Day, Charles Lamb and Dickens all mention it in their writings. In Martin Chuzzlewit, John Westlock describes the disorder of his chambers as ‘the sort of impromptu arrangements that might have suggested themselves to Philip Quarll or Robinson Crusoe’. It is one of those works that strangely vanished from the canon having achieved what seemed like immortality for over a century.
Another aspect of its hybrid nature is that this work managed to appeal both to adult and child audiences. This edition of the full text is clearly aimed at a youth or adult audience, but the story was seized on by publishers of children’s books in England such as Marshall, who published a spate of small format abridged editions for children, accompanied by charming woodcut illustrations.

The scarce first edition of this delightful collection of moral tales, attributed to the prolific children’s writer Richard Johnson. Illustrations by Bewick were added to the second and subsequent editions, of which there were many, including four in America, in Philadelphia, Wilmington and New York. The author is given on the title page as ‘by the editor of the Looking Glass for the Mind’, which was printed by Newbery in 1787 and which was actually by the French children’s writer Arnaud Berquin. It was translated by ‘J. Cooper’, one of the many pseudonyms of Richard Johnson.
In his preface, the editor praises Berquin and other foreign writers whose books for the juvenile market ‘merit the highest encomiums’ and who have humbled themselves to deal in ‘the plain language of youth, in order to teach them wisdom, virtue, and morality’. The text comprises some 23 short stories, of varied length, style and setting, including such titles as ‘Juvenile Tyranny conquered’, ‘The Book of Nature’, ‘The happy Effects of Sunday Schools on the Morals of the rising Generation’, ‘The Happy Villager’, ‘The Indolent Beauty’ and ‘Female Courage properly considered’.

An attractive copy of the second edition of this compilation of English literature, first published in 1799 for the French market. Inspired by the success of The Beauties of the Spectator, Angelo Vergani assembled the present anthology of ‘Fables, Moral Tales, Histories, Allegories and Reflexions selected from the most eminent English authors with a view to afford farther assistance to those who are desirous of becoming thoroughly acquainted with the elegance and beauty of the English Language’. The extracts are taken from Johnson, Chesterfield, Middleton, Shakespeare, Sterne, Goldsmith and many others, as originally published in the Spectator, Tatler and Guardian. Although the work is intended chiefly for those learning the English language, Vergani suggests that the passages selected are such as will bring pleasure to ‘all sorts of readers’.