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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).

The scarce first English edition of Fabliaux ou contes du XIIe et du XIIIe siècle, Paris 1779, compiled and edited by Legrand d’Aussy, conservator of French manuscripts in the Bibliothèque nationale. The work consists of 37 ‘original stories, serious and comic’ taken from French legends and, as such, presenting a very different impression on the English reader, who would have been introduced for the first time to many of the tales (although some, notably the Arthurian tales, would have been well enough known). The work is prefaced by a longish essay by the anonymous translator on the origin and nature of legend and fables. The tales are accompanied by explanations of what is known about each story and where it has been reworked: ‘with an account of the imitations and uses that have since been made of them, by Bocasse [Boccacio], Molière, Bossuet, La Fontaine, Racine, Corneille, Voltaire, Rousseau, and other modern authors’ (advertisement).
Samuel Badcock wrote in the Monthly Review: ‘These Tales shock probability. We cannot realise many of the incidents, yet they discover a vigorous and wild imagination. They awaken curiosity; and as they are generally short, they are seldom tedious: and we easily suffer ourselves to be carried away by the pleasing illusion into the land of inchantment [sic]’ (MR 76 p. 61).

This well-known utopian novel was for many years believed to be by Bishop Berkeley, an incorrect assumption that much increased its popularity and profile. The novel went through numerous editions and was translated into French, German and Italian. First published in 1737, the tale follows the journey undertaken by a prisoner of the inquisition named Gaudentio de Lucca to a country in Africa called Mezzorania.This patriarchal society is fundamentally an experiment in socialism, the citizens have equal rights and property and are governed with an overarching principle of community. Mezzorania has its ancestry in the society of the Ancient Egyptians, marking the tale as an early example of a Lost Race novel.
This copy of the 1776 edition - in a contemporary binding marred by a sturdy reback - contains the following notes by a previous owner: ‘An ingenious novel falsely imparted to Bishop Berkely, the author reputed to be Dr Samuel Scoale of Huntingdon G.M. [Gentleman’s Magazine] 1785 fol. 376’, below which is inscribed: ‘In G.M. Oct 1785 fol. 759 it is attributed to one Barrington, a Catholic priest who had chambers in Gray’s inn and was keeper of a library for the use of the Romish clergy - he was author of several pamphlets chiefly anonymous particularly on the controversy with Julius Bate on Elohim. Classed by Dunlop in his History of Fiction with Robinson Crusoe and Gullivers Travels’. Opposite this extended note, on the front pastedown, is pasted a bookseller’s description quoting Lowndes, describing ‘this admirable work [as] partly a romance and partly a scheme of patriarchal government; the incidents are well contrived and most agreeably related’ (The Bibliographer’s Manual of English Literature 868). The note describes Berington as ‘belonging to the well-known Roman Catholic family of that time’. The pastedown also bears the contemporary heraldic bookplate of Fullerton of Carstairs.
At the time, the novel ‘attained a rank and dignity comparable to that of the Republic of Plato, the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, and the New Atlantis of Lord Bacon’ (Gove, P.B. The Imaginary Voyage in Prose Fiction), partly because of the esteemed Bishop Berkeley’s supposed sponsorship. It was not until 1785, proposed by ‘WH’ in the Gentleman’s Magazine, LV (1785), that Berington began to be associated with the work. Berington’s Mezzorania emerged during a period where exploration was expanding towards far corners of the earth, and was taken up with enthusiasm by a reading public eager to contemplate new lands and other societies. Compared with its utopian predecessors, the idea of this foreign society was no longer an alien, new idea, but instead a credible representation of what might lie beyond British seas.

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’.

A fascinating miscellany bringing together a number of articles and poems that were first published in the Chester Courant, each entry being clearly dated as to its first publication. Of particular interest is the first part which includes numerous prose reports relating to the Jacobite rebellion (pp. 4-169). In the brief preface, the editors explain that the project came about because of the many requests for back numbers of the Chester Courant, which they were unable to supply and so ‘they were induced to make a Collection of several of their Papers within the Compass of a few Years, and to publish them in a Pocket-Volume’.
‘Among these, are some Journals, whose Contents... will give a Series of Accounts relating to the Insurrection of the Scots, A.D. 1745: Their several Marches, and Advance, even almost to the Centre of this Kingdom; their Retreat, and Winter’s Warfare in the North; their Defeat at the Battle of Culloden; and the extinguishment of the Rebellion, by the immediate, and other Consequences of that Victory’ (pp. iii-iv).
Other articles of note include an essay on English marriage by a French author, ‘An Extract from the Observations of a French Author, upon the Manners and Customs of the English Nation’ (pp. 193-195), ‘A Copy of a Letter from a French Lady at Paris; giving a particular account of the Manner in which a certain Prince was lately arrested’ (pp. 311- 319), an Oxford poem on Frugality (pp. 207-208) and various accounts of Oxford University (pp. 296-310), ‘The Speech of Miss Polly Baker, before a court of Judicature, at Connecticut, near Boston in New-England, where she was prosecuted the fifth time for having a Bastard Child: Which influenced the Court to dispense with her Punishment, and induced one of her Judges to marry her the next day’ (pp. 223-226), ‘Beauty’s Value’, by William Shakespeare (p. 289-290), and various poems on silk-mills, taxes, ‘the hoop’, earthquakes, a jubilee ball, fireworks, poor sailors and the Gunpowder Plot (p. 358, with the manuscript note, ‘ ‘Giffard was a Gentleman; on his stage Garrick first appeared; but never with all his art could mimick Giffard!’ (note cropped, see p. 358).

The Chester Miscellany is offered with the first five parts (of six) of a scarce Scottish periodical, The Caledonian; a Quarterly Journal, Volume First, Dundee 1821, in contemporary half sheep over marbled boards, with three engraved plates of mechanical devices. OCLC lists the British Library only.

Dodington left all his property to his cousin, Thomas Wyndham of Hammersmith, who in turn left it all to Henry Penruddocke Wyndham. In addition to the diary, it included a vast collection of Dodington’s private correspondence. Wyndham, a native of Compton Chamberlayne near Salisbury, also published a translation of the entries for Wiltshire in the Domesday Book, hoping that it might pave the way for a more general history of Wiltshire, for which he put up some money.

A good copy in an Irish binding of these two works lavishly illustrated by Lady Diana Beauclerk. The daughter of Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough, Lady Di, as she was known, suffered two miserable marriages, the first to Frederick St. John, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke, during which they were both notoriously unfaithful, and the second to Topham Beauclerk (1739-1780), the great-grandson of Nell Gwyn and Charles II. Beauclerk was a close friend of Dr. Johnson and was known for his brilliant conversation, but he was also famous for his ill-humour and lack of personal hygiene: Fanny Burney recorded Edmund Burke’s reaction to the death of Beauclerk: ‘I never, myself, so much enjoyed the sight of happiness in another, as in that woman when I first saw her after the death of her husband’.
‘During [the years following her divorce] Lady Diana's artistic talents became particularly evident: she practised portraiture, and her enormous output of small drawings of fat cupids entangled in branches of grapes and little girls wearing mob caps gave place to larger and more ambitious groups of peasantry introduced into landscaped backgrounds. She worked chiefly in pen and ink, pastel, and watercolour. Essentially a designer, she successfully executed seven large panels in ‘soot ink’ (black wash), mounted on Indian blue damask and illustrating Horace Walpole's tragedy The Mysterious Mother. Apt to overrate her skills, Walpole placed these at Strawberry Hill in a specially designed hexagonal room named the Beauclerc closet. At the same time he opined absurdly that ‘Salvator Rosa and Guido could not surpass their expression and beauty’ (Anecdotes of Painting, 24.524). Lady Diana also enjoyed the patronage of Josiah Wedgwood, probably from 1785, when her designs, mostly those of laughing bacchanalian boys, were translated as bas-reliefs onto jasper ornaments, plates, and jugs; they proved to be enormously popular. In 1796 she illustrated the English translation of G. A. Burger's ballad Leonora and in 1797 The Fables of John Dryden; in both cases her illustrations were engraved mostly by Francesco Bartolozzi’ (ODNB). The other engravings in the Dryden are by Vandenberg, Cheeseman and Gardiner.

A lovely copy of this privately printed poem by a Sussex clergyman, who was a professor of poetry at Oxford and a fellow of Magdalen College. Hurdis set up his own printing press at his house in Bishopstone, near Seaford in Sussex, in 1796, from where he printed selections from his own lectures and poems. The Favorite Village is thought to be his best work and is a panegyric to Bishopstone, the village where he was born and where he eventually became the vicar. It is a nostalgic eulogy to the village, set within the framework of nature and the seasons and much influenced by the poetry of Cowper and Thomson.

Attributed to the architect and traveller Charles Kelsall, this is an entertaining fantasy arising from the proposal to erect a national monument to Shakespeare. Written in the form of a play, it is set in the green-room at midnight, where the committee take their seats around a long table. As they prepare to begin their meeting, there is a peal of thunder and a ball of fire rends one of the walls, through which appears the shade of Aristotle, who addresses the committee with his thoughts on Shakespeare. He is followed by many others, including Longinus, Aeschylus, Molière, Milton (blind), Dryden, Voltaire, Diderot, Johnson, Susanna Shakespeare, Frank Crib (owner of the Butcher’s Shop at Stratford-upon-Avon), Peter Ogee, an Architect of York, Obadiah Flagel, a Schoolmaster of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Samuel Grim, Plug-turner of the Pipes which supply the Theatre with Gas.

A scarce and highly sentimental Gothic novel by Eliza Parsons, author of two of Jane Austen’s ‘horrid novels’, the seven gothic novels recommended to Catherine Morland by Isabella Thorpe in Northanger Abbey. The two novels are The Castle of Wolfenbach, 1793 - the first novel in Isabella’s list and probably the most reprinted since - and Mysterious Warnings, published in 1796, the year before the present work.
The Girl of the Mountains is set in a desolate region of France where the eponymous heroine, Adelaide, is raised by her impoverished but noble father after the death of her mother. One day wandering about the mountains, her father is attacked by three bandits, but he is saved at the last moment due to the repentance of one of the bandits, whose bearing and manners suggest a noble birth and a mysterious past. The consequences of the meeting are disastrous for Adelaide, who finds herself forced into an adventure that leads her to Spain and encounters with flirtatious Dons, gallant Governors, a monk that had been in the service of Louis XII and a bossy Baroness and at the centre of the whole tale: an ancient manuscript and a mystery waiting to be revealed.
The three final leaves of advertisements for ‘Minerva Publications’ advertise just two novels: Count St. Blanchard, quoting the lengthy and largely positive piece in the Critical Review, and The Pavilion, quoting the review from the British Critic. This is a far cry from the traditional listing of multiple titles available and is an enlightened form of advertising, drawing the reader in to both novels.
A Dublin edition followed in 1798, published by P. Byrne and a Philadelphia edition, by John Bioren and David Hogan, was published in 1801. The dedication of this first edition is to Princess Sophia Matilda of Gloucester.

A scarce poetical description of the earliest history of Scotland, accompanied by notes. This slim (and very scarce) volume is all that came of an ambitious plan for a four volume work of poetry and scholarship spanning several centuries. Dedicated to George James Hay, Earl of Errol and with a prefatory ‘Address to the Inhabitants of Annandale’, the work opens with a note on the origin of the Scots and a three page introduction in verse. The origins of the nation are further explored in ‘Chapter First’, which ends with the death of the mythical Fergus I. The poem continues with the invasion of the Danes, the death of Kennethus, the battles of Almon and Loncarty and the reign of Malcolm, which take the reader to the beginning of Book IV, accompanied by footnotes throughout. At this point, verse is abandoned and the narrative is ‘continued in Prose, from Fergus I. to Robert Bruce, being the end of the first Volume’ (pp. 55-70). The remaining pages contain verses by and addressed to John Carruthers, on various subjects.
Given the slightness of the volume, the disclaimer in the opening address is rather endearing: ‘I am only sorry that, on account of the book swelling larger than could possibly be afforded at the price, I have been necessitated to leave out the verse, and insert the notes only, from the reign of Macbeth. I shall however make some amends in the next volume, which will be much more concise, having only to treat of nine Kings reigns, down to James the Sixth’. In a final note at the end of the text, Carruthers addds ‘From the want of authentic records in the early ages of Scottish history, I have been as brief as the subject would admit. When we come to more enlightened times, the events that passed will be more fully treated. The fourth and last volume of this Book, which gives an account of this present war from its commencement, will be above 200 pages, including the Subscribers names, who are now upwards of two thousand’.

A scarce Dublin printed abridgement of Joseph Andrews aimed at the children’s market. This is an excellent example of the middle ground of children’s literature, where juvenile fiction intersects with and borrows from mainstream literature. Considerably fatter than most children’s books, this juvenile Fielding has very much the feel of a book: it is chunky, but it fits easily into a pocket, and, crucially, is bound in Dutch floral boards, the trademark binding of younger juveniles.

Francis Newbery first published an abridged version of Joseph Andrews in 1769, accompanied by a frontispiece and five other engraved plates, an edition that Gumuchian describes as ‘excessively rare’. Further Newbery editions appeared in 1784, 1793, both with the illustrations and in 1799, without. This Dublin printed juvenile edition probably has nothing to do with the Newbery family, save the respectability of the borrowed name on the title-page.

ESTC has five entries for actual Newbery printings of this title:
i. London, F. Newbery, 1769 (Roscoe J131 (1), pp. xii, 149, [1], plates) ESTC t89898, at BL only. Cotsen also has an imperfect copy.
ii. London, F. Newbery, 1769 (not in Roscoe), pp. x, 176 (ie. 196), plates) ESTC n4293, at Harvard only.
iii. London, E. Newbery, 1784 (Roscoe J131 (2), pp. x, 163, [1], plates) ESTC t89899, at BL, Harvard, Morgan (2 copies), Toronto and Yale. Cotsen also has a copy, wanting two of the plates.
iv. London, E. Newbery, 1793 (Roscoe J131 (3), pp. 180, plates) ESTC n17521, at Morgan only.
v. London, E. Newbery, 1799 (Roscoe J131 (4), pp. 136, [8], frontispiece) ESTC n6990, at BL, Cambridge and UCLA.

First English edition of Carl Spindler’s Der Jude, first published in Stuttgart in 1827. One of several historical romances by the actor turned novelist: he joined a company of strolling players in Germany before turning his hand to historical fiction. He was a prolific author in many fields and edited a periodical publication, Vergissmeinicht, which ran from 1830 until his death in 1855 and included a number of minor novels. He is mainly remembered for his historical fiction, the best of which was published in a flurry in the late 1820s, although his published work runs to some hundred volumes.
‘The Editor of the Jew deems it necessary to state that these volumes are a very free version of a work, bearing the same title, which has attained to a high degree of popularity upon the continent... The five volumes (of the original German) before us, contain as many incidents and characters as would set up five common novelists in their trade; and yet the whole of this enormous mass is managed with a dexterity rarely exhibited by a common novelist in the execution of his own comparatively easy task. The principal personages rise above the crowd in a distinct and conspicuous manner; and the main stream of the story is never confounded with the thousand tributaries that rush into its course’ (Introduction, pp. i-iv).
The present novel is not in Wolff which does list his The Jesuit, a picture of manners and character from the first quarter of the eighteenth century, London, Edward Bull, 1839. Sadleir includes none of his works.

'There is no Place whatever, in which the Ladies have so much the Opportunity of shewing themselves to Advantage, as in their own Drawing Rooms'. So begins this beguiling work which boasts the inclusion of love stories, adventure stories, imaginary voyages and eastern mystique, all narrated from the excellent Ethelinda's drawing room. 'An 'assembly' collection of brief amorous novels, imaginary voyages, and moral histories, told to each other by the daily visitors to the drawing room of the beautiful Ethelinda, who has banished cards and gossip in favour of the edifying art of storytelling' (Beasley). The work is divided into six 'days', each with an introduction, describing those present and setting the drawing room in the wider context of society (guests coming on from dinner; balls thrown for all the assembled company), the narration of a short story by one of the guests and a final open discussion of the issues raised in the story.
The six novellas included are 'The History of Rodomond, and the Beautiful Indian' (pp. 13-42); 'The Fair Unfortunate, a true Secret History' (pp. 50-77); 'The True History of Henrietta de Bellgrave. A Woman born only for Calamities: a distres'd Virgin, unhappy Wife, and most afflicted Mother', Wrote by herself for the Use of her Daughter' (pp. 101-174); 'The Adventures of Marilla' (pp. 212-232); 'The Story of Berinthia' (pp. 238-254) & 'The History of Adrastus, Semanthe, and Apamia' (pp. 257-268); 'The History of Clyamon and Constantia, or the Force of Love and Jealousy' (pp. 289-328). In addition to the main short stories in each part there are numerous anecdotes, amusing incidents such as amorous verses accidentally falling out of pockets, a mock proposal to parliament for reforming taxes and many other such whimsical conversation pieces, making the cement with which these stories are held together every bit as interesting as the texts themselves. The third novella, 'The True History of Henrietta of Bellgrave', is an imaginary voyage to the East Indies first published in 1744; it was frequently reprinted as a chapbook in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The first edition was published in 1744 (ESTC t80582 Feb '03 lists BL, Cambridge, NLS, Glasgow, McMaster, Yale, Clark, Folger, Newberry, Minnesota & Harvard) and a Dublin edition appeared in 1746. It was reprinted under the title The Memoirs of Lydia Tongue-Pad in 1768 and later selections were published, particularly of 'The True History of Henrietta of Bellgrave' (see above) and continuations. A Russian translation, by Daniil Petrov, was published under the title Zhenskaia ubornaia komnata, Moskva 1781. More recently, it was published by Garland as part of the The Flowering of the Novel series, New York 1974. It has sometimes been attributed to Grace Percivall and E.W. Stackhouse but it is generally given as anonymous.

An attractive copy in plain panelled calf of this important biography of King Alfred, first published here from the manuscript. Obadiah Walker had edited a Latin translation in 1678, but this edition, edited by Hearne, was taken from Spelman’s original at the Bodleian. It is Hearne’s own copious and scholarly notes that make this an important work. ‘Spelman’s Life of Alfred, a poor thing in itself, is memorable for its part in the Oxford-Cambridge controversy as to precedence... but it is memorable also as a testimony to the growth at Oxford of interest in the Old English language and our early chronicles’ (Carter).
Much controversy surrounded the publication of this work and Hearne writes at some length in his diary (II 179 ff) about Arthur Charlett’s attempts to prevent him publishing this edition. Apparently he believed that only a University College man should be permitted to attempt it, that being the college that King Alfred was said to have founded. As for Hearne, he was at St. Edmund Hall.

A scarce collection of short stories written by a surgeon from Newcastle and intended to shed light on the psychology of the human mind in both men and women. The first volume is heavily influenced by the vogue for orientalism, with stories such as ‘Asem the Man-Hater’, ‘Choang and Hansi, a Chinese Tale’, ‘The Hermit of Lebanon’ and ‘An Eastern Sage’s Advice to his Son’. The second volume contains tales of sensibility largely set in Europe, including ‘The Orphan’, ‘Female Heroism, Illustrated’ and ‘The Story of an unfortunate Young Lady’.
The preface argues for the celebration, and pecuniary recognition, of the writer for his role in educating the masses: ‘In proportion as society refines, new books must ever become more necessary... In a polite age, almost every person becomes a reader, and receives more instruction from the press than the pulpit. The preaching Bonse may instruct the illiterate peasant; but nothing less than the insinuating address of fine writing can win its way to an heart already relaxed in all the effeminacy of refinement... Instead, therefore, of thinking the number of new publications too great, I could wish it still greater, as they are the most useful instruments of reformation... Instead, therefore, of complaining that writers are overpaid, when their works procure them a bare subsistence, I should imagine it the duty of a state, not only to encourage their numbers, but their industry. A Bonse is rewarded with immense riches for instructing only a few, even of the most ignorant, of the people; and sure the poor scholar should not beg his bread, who is capable of instructing a million’ (Introduction, pp. 1-3).
This copy, in its rather attractive binding, does not have the portrait. The copy in the British Library does have a portrait, although there is no evidence of its being conjugate, and the Chicago copy does have a portrait, but it is tipped in. The digitised copy at Northwestern does not have a portrait, though interestingly the preliminary leaves of Vol. I, including the list of subscribers, and the entire text of Vol. II, have been entirely reset. It is hard to know in a book of this scarcity whether all copies were issued with a frontispiece or not and the internal evidence, while suggestive of a possible removal, is not conclusive.
The list of subscribers, together with the ‘additional list’, includes some 275 names. This is one of several editions, all published posthumously and all very scarce. Another edition was published in a single volume in 1785 under the title ‘Novellettes moral and sentimental partly original and partly compiled by the late T. Potter, Surgeon at North Shields, near Newcastle upon Tyne’ (ESTC t73606, at BL, Harvard, Illinois and Penn). A second edition, also published in two volumes, followed in 1786 (’London, printed by the editor, by J.P. Cooke’, ESTC n4109, at Newberry and Minnesota only), with two further London editions following, one printed ‘at the Mary-le-Bone printing-office, Great Titchfield-street’, in 1786-1787 (ESTC n4108, at UCLA only) and the other printed under the title ‘The moralist, or tales of instruction, and entertainment, partly original and partly compiled, by the late T. Potter’, London, ‘printed for the editor’, circa 1785 (ESTC t67320). This final edition has a list of subscribers, with the first volume containing the same tales as the previous editions, but with entirely different contents in the second volume.

A magnificent spoof volume of imitations of the contemporary poets by James Hogg. With an advertisement explaining his long-conceived project of obtaining one piece of work from ‘each of the principal living Bards of Britain’ and publishing them together. The author was refused permission to reprint other poets’ work and set to achieve the same ends by invention. Byron, Wordsworth, Scott, Southey, Coleridge and James Wilson are the poets parodied, plus one poem in Scottish dialect which Hogg credits to himself.

An anonymous verse translation of two plays by Racine. The first is Racine’s final tragedy, Athalie, first performed in 1691 and considered one of his greatest achievements: Voltaire thought it the greatest triumph of the human mind while Flaubert, in Madame Bovary, ranked it as the masterpiece of the French stage. The second play translated here is the lesser-known Esther, 1689, a work in three acts written for the young ladies of Madame de Maintenon’s academy, the Maison Royale de Saint Louis. A note in the 1876 translation by Caroline Andrews reads: ‘As the translator has followed closely the original, she hopes to recommend the same to the attention of lady educators’.

With a dedication to the Duchess of Gordon and a brief address to the reader: ‘The Translator has often admired the sublimity of sentiment, and elegant simplicity that reign in the sacred dramas of Racine. He has reaped both pleasure and edification from the perusal of these pieces, so justly esteemed by those who have a relish for sacred poetry: Hence he has been induced to believe that a translation of them, imitating closely the simple manner and style of the originals, might afford a similar gratification to the well-disposed British reader’.

A charming copy of a scarce Hamburg printed, English language edition of Thomson’s Seasons. With a second title-page, attractively engraved with bucolic depiction of the seasons, a dedication to Christian Daniel Ebeling, signed John Timaeus, Patrick Murdoch’s life of James Thomson and John Aikin’s critical appraisal of the poem, first published in 1778.

A delightful copy of Sterne’s Sermons in a fine contemporary binding with a nice female provenance. This set includes the first edition of the second part, the final three volumes under the title Sermons by the late Rev. Mr. Sterne, which were published on 10th June, 1769. They were subsequently published in many editions with the earlier volumes. The first four volumes, under the title The Sermons of Mr. Yorick, were first published on 22nd May 1760. This is a completely charming set in a simple, lightly sprinkled, pale calf binding.