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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).

A scarce Dublin reprint of this English translation by Sarah Scott of La Place’s novel, La Laideur Aimable, et les Dangers de la Beauté, first published under a false ‘Londres’ imprint in 1752. There were two distinct issues of the original French novel, the first published with the subtitle ‘Histoire Véritable’ (ESTC t130379, at BL, Taylorian, Clark and Gdansk) and the second bearing the slightly altered title with the clause ‘Piéce trouvée dans les Papiers de Mlle *** Auteur de la Cécile’. Presumably this latter clause was deemed to help sales on the back of his other novel, Mémoires de Cécile (Cioranescu 36937), also published in 1752, perhaps after the first appearance of this less successful work. Sarah Scott’s reworking of the title is particularly interesting as she turns the negative into a positive and leaves out altogether the phrase ‘the dangers of beauty’, but that she leaves in the - presumably fictitious - claim to verisimilitude as being the ‘real life and fortunes of a young lady of distinction’, not quite the same as finding the story in the papers of Mademoiselle ***, but tending to the same illusion.
It would be interesting to compare nuances of translation as the female translator handles the tricky subject of female ugliness in the eighteenth century as described by a male writer: very much an unfashionable idea and perhaps one reason the novel itself does not seem to have been very popular in either language. This English translation - with the ‘Dedication to those Ladies who are ignominiously distinguished under the Denomination of Ugly’ - was first published in 1754 and was for some time was taken for an original work by Sarah Scott.

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’.

A scarce Dublin reprint of a scarce novel 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.
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).

A scarce provincially printed novel charting the life and adventures of a feckless but charming rogue. Printed in Liverpool, in an unusual format for a novel, it tantalisingly combines an arch style with the possibility that its claims to being a factual account - that old turkey - might in this case actually be true. Whatever the answer to that tricky question, the romps and romantic escapades of the hero make for a very good read as we follow him through Manchester, Dublin and Liverpool to London.
With a humorous dedication ‘To his most Potent, Puissant, High and Mighty Serene Highness, The Lord Oblivion’ which begins, ‘Voracious Sir, Without leave, I presume to dedicate the following labors of my pen to you, not like a number of my contemporary brethren, whose works involuntarily fall to your share; no, revered sir, I step out of the common tract of writers, who pretend to consign their works to immortal fame, which, only mistaking, are in reallity [sic] meant for you; but as a benefit, if conferred with an ill grace, loses much of its intrinsic value, so these, my lucubrations, [as no doubt all revolving time will give them into your possession] will come with a much better appearance, presented to you, thus freely, from myself’.

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 handsome copy of the scarce first edition of Susannah Gunning’s first independent novel, preceded by the collaborative Histories of Lady Frances S --- and Lady Susananah S --- , 1763, which was written with her sister, Margaret, and published by subscription. Set in Worcestershire, Family Pictures focusses on middle-class life and morality and is written partly as an epistolary novel. It contains an interesting preface which ‘blasts inadequate female education’ (Feminist Companion) and talks of novels and circulating libraries as the inevitable refuge of ‘illiterate sisters’ trying to keep up with their ‘pedant’ brothers.
‘It has been, indeed, the custom of the world in general, and consequently of England, to be negligent and backward in training up female minds to literature, the distaff or domestick concerns being allotted them as their proper and most natural province... it is evident, that the generality of mothers instruct their daughters, or cause them to be instructed, merely in such particulars, as are not only useless to society, but likewise highly pernicious. Should Miss be handsome, she is early taught to hold her person in the greatest admiration... She must not learn to write, for fear of becoming round-shouldered, or work, lest she impair her fine eyes. Therefore a little imperfect French, an easy (and too frequently an insufferable) assurance, to tingle a harpsichord, and play quadrille, includes the whole of female education’ (pp. vi-viii).
Susannah Minifie married the unsavoury Captain John Gunning in 1768 and was the mother of the novelist and translator, Elizabeth Gunning. A scandal ensued when Elizabeth opposed her father’s choice of husband. Dubbed the ‘Gunninghiad’ by Walpole, it embroiled the family in years of shameful revelations concerning John Gunning’s behaviour with reputed forgeries, adulteries and accusations of criminal behaviour.
‘SG was most pungent when she was fictionalizing her personal experiences, but her rather innocent novels do not truly reflect the lurid complications attendant on marriage to John Dunning. In her most dramatic scenes, SG tends toward hyperbole, a habit for which Lady Harcourt coined the word ‘minific’... Yet SG’s satirically treated characters often speak with compressed vigor’ (Janice Thaddeus, A Dictionary of British and American Women Writers 1660-1800, p. 144).

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.

‘The fertile brain and active fingers of Mr. Anthony Frederick Holstein are never idle. One production follows so quick upon another, that he is a host in himself; and we know not how the circulating libraries could go on, if it were not for his indefatigable industry and heroic perseverance. L’Intriguante; or, the Woman of the World, cannot fail to please those readers who delight to revel in horrors; and in this novel they make pick and choose among the dismals, so happily and so plentifully are they scattered over the whole’ (Critical Review, 1813, Vol. 4, p. 556).
The novel opens with a gallows scene where a young, handsome and sincere Arnold Rutledge speaks touchingly of his repentance before being executed for the murder of his patron. A strange start to a novel, where the sympathy of the reader is entirely excited on behalf of a convicted felon, who is dead within seven pages. This is followed by a mysterious assassination, a fatal mugging, the killing of babies using opium and other random acts of cruelty and murder, culminating in the burning to death of one of the principal female characters. Add to this a gloomy dingle, near a priory and haunted by the terrifying figure of a nun, a young wife running mad for the love of another man and a series of concerts and society balls interspersed with violence and murder, and we have all the ingredients for a splendid gothic novel.
‘What Miss - or what Maudlin, listless wife’, asked the reviewer in The Critical Review, ‘does not glow with admiration when she meets with such language as the following:- His ardent gaze, rose-blighted (much virtue in rose blighted) adored lover, convulsive start, voice soft, musical, emphatic, pangs of jealousy iceing the streamts of love, glowing beneath the gaze of his ardent eyes... What lady of modern sensibility can read the above, without heaving a thousand soft sighs of sympathy? And with this sort of diction Mr. Holstein’s work abounds. This is the inebriating language, these are the senseless rhapsodies that turn our girls’ heads, and make them imagine themselves lovely unfortunates, and interesting angels. It is this flowing, flowering accumulation of prettinesses that makes the Miss of fifteen toss up her nose in the wind, at the plain sense and wholesome admonition of her parents and guardians’ (Critical Review, 1813, Vol. 4, p. 557).

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).

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 delightful copy of what is generally considered to be Bage’s most accomplished novel. Uncut throughout and in the original boards, this copy comes from the English reading society in Groningen. Each volume has for its front pastedown the printed lending library slip which reads, ‘No. __ / Sending Bill / of the English reading Society / Groningen the __ 17__’. A contemporary hand has completed as follows: ‘Man as he is Vol. 1 [-IV]. [No.] 23 Turn of Books. [the] 20th Jan [17]96’.
The first of Bage's two great novels, less well known than Hermsprong; or, Man as he is not, 1796 but thought by many (such as Tompkins, who calls it simply ‘Bage’s best book’) to be the better of the two. Bage, 'the most distinguished novelist ever connected with the Minerva Press', was a paper manufacturer from the midlands who wrote six novels, three of which were printed at the Minerva Press. Influenced by the ideas of the French revolution, his novels are satirical and revolutionary in tone and are 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).
According to the publisher's advertisement in The Star, June 26, 1792, Man as He Is 'has been pronounced the first-rate novel in the English language'. However, 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, packed only with first-hand knowledge of men and affairs. Yet it is not only by contrast that he holds a distinguished place. 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).
'What Bage brought to the novel was a great increase of intellectual content. His active, liberal and independant mind had ranged through a variety of subjects, and his books are full of thought... Bage's tolerance, his readiness to live and let live, is marked in all his books. It is the necessary and far from exhorbitant price paid by a man in order that he may enjoy to the full the company of his fellow-beings' (Tompkins, p. 203).