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  • SUE, Marie-Joseph ‘Eugène’ 1804-1857).
    The Wandering Jew. By Eugène Sue, Author of ‘The Mysteries of Paris’, etc. etc. Vol. I [-III]. London, Chapman and Hall, 1844.

    First Edition in English, Second Issue. Three Volumes, 8vo (215 x 130 mm), pp. iv, 491, [1]; [iv], 375; iv, 372, tear to I, 69, through text with no loss, in contemporary half olive leather over green cloth boards, the edges of the boards slightly damp-stained with loss of pigment, boards tooled in gilt along the edges, spines ruled, lettered and numbered in gilt, marbled edges and endpapers, with the heraldic bookplate of Kemmis in each volume.

    The first English edition of an international best-seller, a fiercely anti-Catholic gothic novel that was first published in serial form in Paris as Le Juif… (more)

    The first English edition of an international best-seller, a fiercely anti-Catholic gothic novel that was first published in serial form in Paris as Le Juif errant, 1844. Eugène Sue - who incidentally is remembered as coining the phrase ‘revenge is a dish best served cold’ (in his novel Matilde, 1841) - is mostly remembered for his socialist-inspired anti-Catholic novels, the present novel and The Mysteries of Paris, both of which were enormously popular examples of the serial novel in France. In The Wandering Jew, Sue tells of the conflict between the eponymous hero and the villain, a Jesuit called Rodin, set against a backdrop of poverty, crime and the harsh life of working class Paris, contrasted with the corruption of the nobility. Both books were highly controversial because of their vivid gothic portrayals of violence and corruption and their overtly socialist and anti-clerical message.
    First published in serial form in England, this English translation appeared bi-weekly in illustrated parts at one shilling, concurrently with the original French text. When the first volume was completed for separate publication, Chapman & Hall began the publication of a series of twenty-six sixpenny parts containing the illustrations alone, which were published as Heath’s Illustrations to the Wandering Jew, 1845-1846. The present set was issued late in 1845, although the title-pages are unaltered from their first appearance in 1844, without the illustrations and bound in dark green fine-ribbed cloth.

    Sadleir 3159.

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  • HOBLER, John Paul.
    The Words of the Favourite Pieces, as performed at the Glee Club, held at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, Strand. Compiled from their Library, by J. Paul Hobler. London, Symonds, 1794.

    First Edition. Small 8vo (155 x 95 mm), pp. [iv], 85, [6], in contemporary unlettered, freeform, tree calf, spine ruled in gilt, some wear.

    An important collection of lyrics for songs and rounds etc, as sung at England’s most notable glee club at the end of the eighteenth century.… (more)

    An important collection of lyrics for songs and rounds etc, as sung at England’s most notable glee club at the end of the eighteenth century. Included are songs by well-known musicians such as John Wall Callcott, Dr. Benjamin Cooke, Stephen Paxton and Samuel Webbe, including the latter’s ‘Glorious Apollo’ which became a traditional opening for glee club programmes. With an index.

    ESTC t110779.

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  • The Works of Shakespeare. by SHAKESPEARE, William (1564-1616).
    SHAKESPEARE, William (1564-1616).
    The Works of Shakespeare. Glasgow, David Bryce, 1904.

    40 volumes, 64mo, (50 x 32 mm), each volume bearing a frontispiece with half-title on the recto, and with the dedication leaf ‘by Special Permission to Miss Ellen Terry’, printed on fine India paper, bound in contemporary green chamois leather, marble effect endpapers, central armorial device blind stamped on the front covers with blind stamped single fillet border extending across the spine to both covers, spines lettered in gilt, small chips to the spines of As You Like It, Venus & Adonis (split along joint) and King Lear (larger portion missing at foot of spine), the gilt faded to differing degrees by volume, the green colour of the reversed calf bindings faded along the spines and the front covers on volumes situated at the edge of the bookcase, gilt edges, the whole housed in the original plain polished oak swivelling bookcase.

    A delightful example of the most charming of David Bryce’s ‘Ellen Terry’ series of miniature literary sets. The 40 volumes include the plays, the sonnets,… (more)

    A delightful example of the most charming of David Bryce’s ‘Ellen Terry’ series of miniature literary sets. The 40 volumes include the plays, the sonnets, a biographical sketch and a glossary. The editor was J. Talfourd Blair.

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  • SWIFT, Jonathan (1667-1745).
    DESFONTAINES, Abbé Pierre François Guyot (1685-1749), translator.
    Voyages de Gulliver. Tome Premier [-Second]. Paris, Guérin, 1727.

    First French Edition, First Issue. Two volumes in one, 12mo in eights and fours, pp. [vi], [vii]-xli, [v], 123, [1]; [125]-248; [vii], [i], 119, [1]; [121]-289, [3], with four engraved plates, unsigned, one to each part, in contemporary calf, sympathetically rebacked, spine gilt in compartments, red morocco label lettered in gilt, red edges, marbled endpapers, with the later bookplates of Henri Beraldi and La Goualante.

    Gulliver's Travels was an overnight best-seller in France. Following swiftly on the publication of the English text in late October 1726, the first French language… (more)

    Gulliver's Travels was an overnight best-seller in France. Following swiftly on the publication of the English text in late October 1726, the first French language edition, by an anonymous translator, appeared in the Hague in January 1727. This Desfontaines translation followed some three months later, in April 1727. Although it was less faithful to the original, being heavily abridged and at times almost closer to an adaptation than a translation, it was in Desfontaines’ version that Gulliver took France by storm. This is the first issue of the first appearance of that translation and the first publication of Gulliver in France. The Privilège du Roy, advertised at the foot of the imprint, had been granted to Hypolite-Louis Guérin on 20th March 1727. On the following day he shared it with two other local printers: 'faisant part du present Privilege aux Sieurs Gabriel Martin & Jacques Guérin'. Accordingly, the same printing of this first edition appears with two other imprints on the titles of both volumes.
    It was in this translation by Desfontaines’ that Swift’s work had a profound influence on French literature: ‘this shoddy but elegantly written version was repeatedly reissued in France well into the late 19th century, with a record 180 editions by the 1920s’ (Paul-Gabriel Boucé). Desfontaines went on to write his famous continuation, Le Nouveau Gulliver, which was also very popular and in turn saw translations into English, German and Italian. Graebar, who says that Desfontaines’ translation ‘outshines all later ones’, suggests that it was partly the abridged nature of Desfontaines’ version that ensured its success: ‘by reducing it to the expectations of his addressees, an approach that proved immediately as well as lastingly successful’.

    OCLC lists twenty copies, but only Getty, DLC, Delware, Illinois, Harvard, Princeton and Morgan in America.

    Cohen-de Ricci 210; not in Cioranescu; Teerink-Scouten 383.

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  • KNOX, Vicesimus (1752 - 1821).
    Winter Evenings: Or, Lucubrations on Life and Letters. In Three Volumes. Vol. I [-III]. London, Charles Dilly, 1788.

    First Edition. Three Volumes, 12mo (182 x 110 mm), pp. [xii], [iv], 311, [1]; [viii], 312; [viii], 311, [1], each volume with the half title and two leaves of contents, some light foxing throughout, in contemporary tree calf, single gilt filet to covers, spines with raised bands, gilt in compartments, red morocco labels lettered in gilt, black morocco labels lettered in gilt, Vols. I and II with new and uncomfortably shiny black labels, with a contemporary armorial bookplate in each volume.

    A popular book of essays by the pacifist and enlightened educationalist, Vicesimus Knox. Following his degree at St. John’s College, Oxford, where he became a… (more)

    A popular book of essays by the pacifist and enlightened educationalist, Vicesimus Knox. Following his degree at St. John’s College, Oxford, where he became a fellow and took orders, he became headmaster of Tonbridge School, taking over from his father who was suffering poor health. A charismatic headmaster whose works on practical education were very popular, the numbers of boys on the roll rose from 20 to 80 during his long tenure there (he was headmaster for 34 years), but they began to fall back again on account of his very public criticism of British foreign policy in a series of articles written for the Morning Chronicle and a number of sermons preached in Brighton on the subject of pacifism. ‘Offensive war’, he argued, was ‘at once detestable, deplorable and ridiculous’ and he criticised the ‘military machine’ as being created by a corrupt administration.
    Knox’ political views grew out of his ‘benign religious vision’ (ODNB), which also informed his educational and conduct writings, such as the present collection. As an essayist, his style is easily accessible and he believed it to be the best genre for communicating his ideal of civic sensibility to the middle classes: ‘I address not my book to systematical and metaphysical doctors, to deep, erudite, and subtle sages, but to those who, without pretending to be among the seven wise men (a later edition adds ‘the liberal merchant, the inquisitive manufacturer, the country gentleman and the various persons who fill the most useful departments in life’) have no objection to kill a little time, by perusing at their leisure the pages of a modern volume’ (I, x).
    The third volume has a diverting chapter, ‘Of Reading Novels and trifling Books without Discrimination’, in which Knox, well known for his dismissal of sentimental novels and his attacks on the morality of Sterne’s Sentimental Journey, satirises the world of the circulating library: ‘I have smiled at hearing a lady admire the delicacy of sentiment which the author of some novel, which she had just been reading, must possess, though I knew it to be the production of some poor hireling, destitute of learning and taste, knowledge of life and manners, and furnished with the few ideas he had by reading the novels of a few preceding years. He had inserted in the title-page, ‘By a Lady’, and various conjectures were often hazarded in my hearing concerning the authoress. Some hinted that they were acquainted with her, and that it was a lady of quality. Others knew it to be written by an acquaintance of their own; while all agreed in asserting, it must be by a lady, the sentiments were so characteristically delicate and refined. You may conjecture how much I was disposed to laugh when I knew it to be the production of a comb-maker in Black Boy Alley’ (III, 151-152).
    This was a popular work, with a Dublin edition published in the same year and further London editions in 1790 and 1795. A ‘Basil’ edition was published by James Decker in conjunction with the Paris booksellers Levrault frères, in 1800 and it was reprinted as part of Robert Lynam’s British Essayists, vols. xxix and xxx, London, 1827.

    ESTC t92823.

    View basket More details Price: £600.00