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The first appearance of the collected poems of Josiah Relph, including his poems in the Cumberland dialect. The collection was posthumously published and was edited by Thomas Sanderson, who supplied the biography of Relph in the preface (pp. viii-xvi). A lengthy glossary is also included as well as a contents leaf at the end. With a long list of over 30 pages of subscribers, including a final page listing ‘Names of Subscribers come to hand since printing the above List’.
‘Relph’s poetical works were published posthumously in 1747 and 1798. A wider, national circulation of a few of his poems was achieved by their inclusion in Thomas West’s A Guide to the Lakes, 1784, which was read by Wordsworth, Southey, and early nineteenth century poets. Similarly, in the twentieth century, his dialect poetry is included in anthologies of Lakeland verse, such as those of the poet Norman Nicholson (The Lake District: an anthology, 1977). Relph’s best verses are in the dialect of his native county; they are on pastoral subjects, with classical allusions’ (ODNB).

A very attractive pair of critical texts on Shakespeare’s characters, uniformly bound (numbered as volumes one and two) and in very fresh condition, from the library of the Marquess of Headfort.

An attractive copy of Samuel Derrick’s selection of English poetry, arranged according to subject, from ‘Abbey’ to ‘Zimri’, through ‘Folly’, ‘Genius’, ‘Gentlewoman’ (and, later, ‘Woman’), ‘Kensington Garden’, ‘Marriage’ and ‘Pleasure’. Derrick was an actor turned writer from Dublin whose most interesting works include a translation of Cyrano de Bergerac’s A Voyage to the Moon, 1753 and an edition of Dryden’s works published in 1760. After the failure of his acting career he continued to work closely with the theatre, making various verse and prose contributions and publishing a successful commentary, The dramatic censor; being remarks upon the conduct, characters, and catastrophe of our most celebrated plays, London 1752. On first arriving in London, he made the acquaintance of Boswell, who later regretted his earlier friendship with ‘this creature... a little blackguard pimping dog’ (Boswell’s London Journal, ed. Potten, 1950, p. 228). Johnson, when asked who was the finer poet, Derrick or Christopher Smart, famously replied, ‘Sir, there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea’ (Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. Hill and Powell, 1934, IV, 192 - 193).
In the preface, Derrick argues that as English boasts the greatest poetry of any modern language, it is an injustice to the nation to neglect it and he believes that the lack of this sort of anthology proves that it has been neglected. He allows that some similar works have been published, for example Byshe’s Art of Poetry, but these have tended to concentrate on translations from the classics: ‘but these are not the perfections of Dryden and Pope: it is Homer and Virgil we compliment in our admiration; the only merits of our great countrymen that occur, are classical knowledge, and talents for smooth versification. It is in their original works, their imitations of nature, and not of men, that we must look for that excellence in our most celebrated writers, which reflects honour upon the nation, and helps to exemplify its literary character’ (p. ix-x).
‘The various topics in these volumes are arranged in alphabetical order; so that they may be easily found, and the authors name is affixed to each. Here the man of knowledge and erudition will find an index to refresh his memory; the preceptor proper themes to exercise and enrich the mind of his pupil; and knowledge, supported by ornament, will be insensibly conveyed to the young gentleman’s heart, who shall reap instruction from the amusement... The editor hopes the work may be also an agreeable present to the ladies, many of whom boast a more refined taste than the generality of the other sex’ (p. x - xi).

The first Dublin edition of Richard Hole’s most important work, first published in London in 1789. A romance epic written in seven books in imitation of Ariosto, Homer, Virgil and Spenser, the work is prefaced by a lengthy discussion of the merits of Ariosto’s heroes above those of Homer, of the genius of The Arabian Nights and of the authenticity and antiquity of Ossian. Disclaiming unintentional plagiarism, Hole points out that Ossian has been a chief influence in his writing and speaks of the ‘free use’ he has made of some passages in Ossian. Certainly some of these are highlighted in the poem itself by the use of Hole’s extensive and very learned footnotes. Informed by Hole’s love of local history, the poem, which opens in the Western Isles of Scotland with a mountain incantation by the three witches, is full of references to England’s west country, the Albion of Stonehenge to Land’s End in Cornwall.
‘Ossian is the presiding influence in the first Arthuriad to recreate the manners and belief systems of fifth-century Britain. In an original story Arthur’s Britons, allied with the Irish, repel a horde of invading Saxons and Scandinavians. Supernatural forces figure largely as Merlin, whose daughter is betrothed to Arthur, is pitted against Urda and the Wierd Sisters, who assist Hengist. The historical and geographical setting suggests that the Exeter poet was attempting to do for west Britain what Macpherson’s Ossian had done for Scotland’ (ODNB).

A scarce versification of one of Cicero’s most famous essays, printed by Samuel Richardson. The author, 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’.

Charlotte Byersley is nineteen when the novel opens and has just lost her mother. She has been brought up quietly by her parents and although she has had a reasonable education, she knows little of the ways of hte world. Her father, anxious to supply her with a woman’s care, naturally chooses very badly and finds her a companion in the giddy and superficial Miss Arabella Seward, whose ‘outward behaviour was polish’d, specious and insincere’ and who had ‘no other aim but to secure a rich husband’. Shortly after Arabella’s arrival, Charlotte meets the son of her father’s friend, young Welford, recently down from Cambridge but the course of true love does not, of course, run smoothly. All is resolved in time, however, after a series of adventures involving them and many other characters. One unusual incident is that the heroine develops smallpox, is extremely ill with the disease but recovers fully except for the loss of her complexion. This she mourns greatly on her recovery as she assumes that with her lost looks, she has also lost all hopes of being loved by Welford. Abandoned in her illness by the worldly Arabella, Charlotte finds a new confidante and nurse in Mrs Bootle, who persuades her to believe that Welford ‘had too much good sense to place his affection meerly on a set of features, or fine complexion’ (p. 111).
‘To say the best of this performance, it contains nothing indecent or offensive to the chaste and modest ear; but, at the same time, it must be confessed, the reader of taste will here find nothing to excite and keep up his curiosity, engage his attention, or interest his heart. The author has involved about half a dozen couple of insipids, in certain uninteresting adventures and difficulities, out of which they are extricated at last; -- and all is conducted in the modern way, without energy, humour, or spirit’ (The Monthly Review, XII, April 1755, p. 388).
Despite this review, this is an interesting novel which addresses issues of female education, parenting and the importance of female appearance. This is a scarce Dublin reprint which is designated as, and printed in, two ‘volumes’ and four parts, but with continuous pagination and register and bound in one volume. The first volume concludes on p. 107, ‘The End of the Second Book’, there is a separate title-page to ‘Vol. II’ and then the story continues with ‘Book the Third’ on p. 111. The novel concludes on p. 221 with ‘The End of the Fourth and Last Book’ and there is a final page of bookseller’s advertisements on p. 222. First published by Dodsley earlier in the same year (ESTC t70728, at BL, CUL, Bodleian, Duke, Huntington, Indiana, Chicago, Penn and Yale), this is often listed as anonymous but has been attributed to John Collet, an attribution followed by James Raven and based on that of the British Library copy.

A scarce translation of a philosophical novel by Wieland, Geheime Geschichte des Philosophen Peregrinus Proteus, first published in Leipzig in 1790-91. Wieland adapts the classical Greek setting by placing it within a quasi dream sequence - the narrator has the ability to listen to the souls the dead - where he is able to examine the life and spiritual development of the hero, the Cynic philosophier, Peregrine Proteus as he looks back on his life after his famous public suicide. The narrator recounts a conversation between Peregrinus and Lucian which takes place in Elysium. The novel owes much to Wieland’s earlier Geschichte des Agathon, 1767, which is celebrated as the first Bildungsroman or coming of age novel.
‘The original author treads with unequal, and sometimes unsteady, steps, in the track of the abbé Barthelemi, and attempts to describe Grecian manners and Grecian systems. The ancient veil, however, imperfectly covers modern ideas; and, though a part is antique, modern decorations often expose the fallacy. The confessions, as the title imports, are in Elysium. Peregrine Proteus (not the son of Neptune) meets Lucian in Elysium, and recounts a series of adventures, scarcely probably, with descriptions neither antique, appropriate, nor always decent. In short, the English reader would have lost little had the Confessions retained their original Teutonic garb. The Agathon of Wieland is again introduced: he should have been condemned to everlasting oblivion’ (Critical Review, November 1804, pp. 359-360).
With a dedication to Prince William Frederick of Glocester [sic], signed I.B. Elrington and a note to the subscribers, signed ‘The Translator’, although no subscribers list is known. A four page preface, ‘To the World’, printed in italics, is signed ‘I.B.E.’ and dated London, March 1st 1804. This scarce translation was first published by Bell; this is a remainder issue published by the Minerva Press, with new half-titles and title-pages. An earlier translation of Wieland’s novel, by William Tooke, was published under the title Private History of Peregrinus Proteus the Philosopher, London, Joseph Johnson, 1796.

An attractive set of this elegant poetical compilation by Richard Graves, author of the highly successful picaresque novel, The Spiritual Quixote, 1773. The two volumes were published four years apart, and the second volume is more commonly found with the second edition of the first volume which was brought out with it. The first volume is dedicated to Lady Head, wife of Sir Thomas Head, of Langley in Berkshire, and the second volume is dedicated to Mrs Warburton ‘as a slender tribute of gratitude for many and important favours received from the family at Prior-Park’. The first volume begins with an eight page Apology - ‘some apology is undoubtedly requisite for publishing at this time of day Madrigals in form’ - in which Graves gives an account of his poetical development, charting influences from Voltaire to his friend William Shenstone. He concludes by stating that, if any of his poems had been immoral, he would sooner have consigned them ‘to eternal oblivion’ than have printed them, even though he fears their destination to humble: ‘to be exposed on stalls... or to encrease the trash of circulating libraries’. The preface to the second volume explains that much of the contents were written for a poetical society at ‘B- E-n’, viz. the literary salon hosted by Anna Miller at her house in Batheaston. Although a number of important writers attended the salon, including David Garrick and Anna Seward, its pretentious customs and Miller’s own mediocre poetry caused it to be widely mocked. ‘This society, I am aware’, writes Graves, ‘has been exposed to the undeserved insults of envy and disappointment: and even to the affected sneers of some fastidious critics of a more respectable character’, by which he probably means Dr. Johnson.
The volumes are attractively illustrated, with engraved frontispieces, vignettes and tail-pieces. The frontispiece to volume one depicts a bucolic scene illustrating a quotation from Virgil, engraved by Joseph Collyer (1748-1827); the two further engraved vignettes in the text are also by Collyer. The frontispiece to volume two, featuring another bucolic scene, is by Charles Grignion (1721-1810). This shows a flighty lady playing the tamborine (possibly Euphrosyne herself, the goddess of mirth and one of the three graces) with three ladies dancing in the background. The half-page engraving on the final leaf (also by Grignion, after C.W.B.) depicts an antique urn decorated with laurels: presumably this refers to the vase used at the Batheaston salon, which was a key feature in the lambasting of the society. Purchased by Anna Miller after it was dug up at Frascati in 1759, the vase was decorated with laurels and placed on an altar, where guests were invited to approach, in order to place their poetical compositions in the vase.

A presentation copy of this attractively produced volume of songs printed by Mary Mayler, who ran one of Bath’s most successful bookshops, lending libraries and publishing houses. A note on the verso of the title-page states that the volume was privately printed: ‘These songs are all published with Music, but being the Property of various Persons, the Author has not the power of publishing them collectively. This Volume has therefore been printed for private circulation’.
Produced at the height of Bayly’s fame when his reputation as lyric poet and songwriter made him a popular feature at fashionable soirées in Bath, at one of which he met his future wife, Helena Beecher Hayes. This privately produced volume was evidently intended as a gracious compliment for favours received: this presentation copy is one of a number of presentation copies extant (unfortunately the inscription on the title-page is hard to read: Mrs Davison? Mrs Davinay?).
The volume includes many of his most famous songs, such as ‘I’d be a butterfly born in a bower’ (p. 28), composed on his wedding journey at Lord Ashdown’s villa near Southampton. The notes at the end of this work include a Latin version of that song composed by Francis Wrangham. 1829 also marked the year that Bayly moved to London and embarked on his theatrical career, one at which he enjoyed a fair success and which saw him through financially when the combined blow of loss of income from his Irish estates and the collapse of his coalmining investments hit him in 1831 and it became necessary for him to support his family by writing.

First book edition of a popular humorous work originally published in eighty-two weekly numbers from February 1st 1681 to August 22nd 1682. A bestselling Restoration periodical, it contains a series of jests, riddles and satirical dialogues on politics, government, Whigs, Popery, foreign affairs, the penny post and a multitude of ephemeral topics of the day. Persistently attributed to Thomas Flatman, though there are poems included that are not entirely consistent with his style; there may well have been some collaboration involved.

A delightful copy of Sept-Chênes’ translation of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, from the Starhemberg Library, in fresh condition in a typically Starhemberg binding. The translator, Leclerc de Sept-Chênes, was tutor to the young Louis XVI and the first volume was partly translated by the young king as an exercise in learning English. Sept-Chênes made corrections to the work of his Royal charge and completed the translation, which was first published in three volumes in 1776. Various other translators tackled the remaining volumes of Gibbon’s work and it was finally published by Moutard in its entirety in 18 volumes, 1788-1795.
‘Louis XVI, étudiant l’anglais sous la direction de Leclerc de Sept-Chênes, lecteur de son cabinet, s’est exercé sur le premier volume, publié en 1776, et, arrivé aux 15ème et 16ème chapitres, il abandonna l’ouvrage que revit, continua et fit imprimer M. de Sept-Chênes’ (Brunet).

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.

One of two very scarce French editions of Joseph Andrews to appear under a false ‘Londres’ imprint in 1743. Hugh Amory, in his New Books by Fielding, describes this as a concealed edition and suggests that it may be the later of the two. 'The presumption of priority goes to the more complex collation (it’s easier to achieve a regular structure from a printed copy than from a manuscript)'. The translation is of course not by the ‘Dame Angloise’ as claimed on the title page, but by that indefatigable Anglophile, the Abbé Desfontaines. It was reprinted in 1750, an edition which is more frequently seen.

A very handsome copy of this scarce edition of Mary Wortley Montagu’s seminal travelogue, first published in 1763. The preface, by Mary Astell (1666-1731), was composed in 1724 for Montagu’s manuscript letters.
‘Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s husband was appointed ambassador to the Porte in 1716, and she accompanied him to Constantinople. During her sojourn in Turkey she recorded her observations and experiences in a journal (destroyed after her death) which provided material for her actual letters to her friends, of which only a few survive, and for the series of 52 letters which she composed a few years after her return to England. These are not actual letters, though headed and dated close to the dates of real letters. The form is partly fiction but provides the substance of her life abroad and her opinions on Turkish life and customs ‘ (Blackmer).

A delightful memento mori in the form of an exquisite volume of posthumous verse by a young girl. The author, Charlotte Penelope Monckton, was the daughter of Robert Monckton-Arundell, fourth Viscount Galway, and Elizabeth Mathew. The first poem in the volume is a poem on the death of her mother in November 1801 and several of the other poems treat of deaths, two of them relating to the death of her brother Augustus Philip, who died in August 1802. The final poem in the volume, ‘Inscription on a Stone erected in Selby Wood, to the Memory of a Favourite Dog’, is dated March 1806, a month before the author’s own death.
With a brief address which turns into a pious dedication leaf:
‘The following artless and unstudied Lines, evidently the momentary Effusions of an elegant and accomplished Mind, possessed of the greatest Sensibility, were doubtless intended by the beloved Writer to be transient; but are now committed to the Press, for the Purpose of presenting a few select Friends with a Memorial of a dear and ever to be lamented SISTER.... Affection alone prompts this Tribute; as those who were acquainted with her amiable Disposition... her mild and gentle Manners... her unaffected Piety... her universal and exemplary Benevolence... her devout Resignation to the Dispensations of Providence, under the severest Afflictions... and had the peculiar Happiness of being ranked among the number of her Friends, can require no other Memorial than their own Feelings.
While her surviving Sisters bow with awful Reverence and Submission to the divine will of the
SUPREME BEING!
they humbly hope they shall not be deemed presumptuous in His Sight, in endeavouring to soften the Affliction of their Hearts, by fondly cherishing the
MEMORY
of Charlotte Penelope Monckton, who was removed from this, to “Another and a Better World”, the 26th Day of April, 1806, aged 21 Years’.

The edition is likely to have been a tiny one, for circulation only to the ‘few select Friends’ as mentioned in the Address and it seems likely for such a project that the other copies may have been similarly bound to this one, in its elegant dark morocco binding, simply gilt.

An attractive copy with a nice Scottish provenance of this famous handbook of legal and general advice to those in different stations in life. The first part of the work contains specific legal advice to different ranks of lawyers and parties engaged in law suits. After this is a section on ‘Advice to the Monarch’ which is followed by ‘Advice to the Subject’. Further sections are addressed to ministers of state, the landed gentry, the man of wealth, the poor and indigent, the merchant, tradesman, farmer and more general advice to husbands and wives, parents and children, old and young, masters and servants, rich and poor. This is the only known publication by the Jacobite judge David Erskine, generally known under his judicial designation, Lord Dun. An eminent member of the Scottish bar, he was also a jealous Jacobite and friend to the non-jurant episcopal clergy. As a member of the last Scottish parliament, he was ardently opposed to the union.
ESTC notes another issue (t193481), with p. viii correctly numbered and with the amended imprint ‘for G. Hamilton and J. Balfour’. Scarcer than the present issue, it is listed at Aberdeen, Cambridge, NLS and DLC only. Curiously, this copy has a stub before the title page, suggesting a cancel, but given that it has the earlier states of the two pages, it may be more likely that an initial blank has been cut away.

Provenance: Sir John Inglis of Cramond, 2nd Baronet (1683-1771), Postmaster General for Scotland.

A scarce comic novel by an obscure cleric from the Lake District whose literary output seems to have been confined to three novels which have all but disappeared. He is known to have lived in Westmoreland, where he supported a large family on the proceeds of a small curacy and a school, but whether his income was notably supplemented by the success of his writings is unknown. His first publication was The Denial; or, the Happy Retreat, London 1790, which was sufficiently popular to run both to a Dublin and a second London printing (each of which is listed in ESTC in a couple of copies). The present novel, originally published in London in the previous year by the Robinsons, is a substantial work of fiction which first appeared in the unusual format of five volumes. The first edition is similarly scarce, with ESTC (n4436) listing copies in the BL, Bodleian (ESTC appears to have listed the five volumes as five copies) and Minnesota (OCLC adds Berkeley). A second edition was published by Lane and Newman (though not designated as the Minerva Press) in 1803. Thomson’s third and final novel, Winifred, a tale of wonder, only survives in a London edition of 1803 (not in ESTC, though the BL has a copy).
In the brief preface, Thomson describes the ‘two principle motives’ of fiction as being to amuse and instruct, suggesting that in combining the two in the present work, the more intelligent reader is likely to find but an ‘insipid entertainment’ in the ‘succession of incidents, and the narration of improbabilities, however surprizing, or however brilliant’ whereas he fears that other readers may find the moral reflections to be insipid. Contemporary reviewers seem to have focussed on the bizarre narrative structure and the humour rather than the moral and didactic passages. ‘He has published some novels of more ingenuity than morality’ concluded A Biographical Dictionary of Living Authors in 1816, whereas an earlier reviewer objected to the style of humour, comparing it to the less successful parts of Smollett’s writings: ‘Manners mistaken and misrepresented: conduct ridiculously absurd in characters laboured with the greatest care: adventures too improbable to amuse, and a vein of broad grotesque humour, of outré description, which Smollett introduced, and which his masterly hand could scarcely wield without exciting, at times, disgust. Under Mr. Thomson’s management, it is intolerable’ (Critical Review, 10: 472, April 1794).

A scarce provincially printed English translation of this first hand account of the aftermath of the 18th Fructidor, originally published as Journal de l’adjutant-général Ramel, Londres 1799. After successfully defending Kehl from the attack of the Archduke Charles, Ramel had been promoted to Commander of the Guard of the Legislature, in which role he denounced the royalist conspiracy of Brottier in early 1797. Despite this, being suspected of royalist sympathies himself, he was denounced in the uprising of 18th Fructidor and was arrested and imprisoned in the Temple. Along with his friends Pichegru, Barthélémy, Laffon de Ladebat and Barbé-Marbois and some six hundred other royalists, Ramel was condemned and deported to the penal colonies in Guiana. In June 1798, Ramel escaped from the penal colony to Paramaribo and thence to London, where this vivid account of the miserable conditions of the camp at Sinnamary and of Ramel’s dering-do escape to England, via Surinam, Berbice and Demerary, was published to wide acclaim.
At least three editions of the French text appeared under ‘Londres’ imprints in 1799; this translation was made from an edition printed in Hamburg in the same year. It was published by subscription and has an impressive list - some fifteen pages - of subscribers, including Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire and Lady Caroline Lamb.

An entertaining romantic history based around the life and diplomatic career of Jan Willem, Duke de Ripperda, with many amusing anecdotes drawn from the Moroccan and Spanish courts and a wealth of information and comment on both countries and the character of the two nations. Interesting comparisons are also drawn between the Spanish and English courts, in the final section. The detailed index at the end makes it a good tool for reference as well as a diverting read.

A scarce edition, under a slightly different title, of Defoe’s Memoirs of a Cavalier, first published in 1720. A work of historical fiction, it is set during the Thirty Years’ War and the English Civil War, with the action taking place in Germany and England. Defoe uses a first person narrative - the story is presented as the discovered memoir of the Shropshire born Colonel Andrew Newport - to unfold political and historical events. Newport leaves for his travels on the Continent in 1630, goes to Vienna and travels with the emperor’s army. He is present at the siege of Magdeburg and describes the sack of the city in vivid detail. He returns to an England in Civil War, joins the king’s army and fights first in Scotland and then against the parliamentarian forces. Critics are divided as to Defoe’s purpose in writing the novel, which is highly political - a warning against the horrors of civil war, an appeal for strong monarchy, an attack on aristocratic kingship - but the novel is also interesting for its portrayal of the cavalier and his martial or masculine identity.