English Literature

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 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 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.

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.

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.

A fascinating and influential work on spinsterhood, female sexuality and the role of the unmarried woman in society. Although Hayley - whose friends included notable women writers such as Elizabeth Carter, Anna Seward and Charlotte Brooke as well as leading male literary figures such as Blake, Cowper and Southey - refers to himself as ‘a Friend to the Sisterhood’ and sets out to defend ‘Old Maids’, yet his work is consistently derogatory, leaving the archetypal figure of the crabby maiden aunt reinforced by his faint praise. ‘It is my intention’, he writes, ‘to redress all the wrongs of the autumnal maiden, and to place her, if possible, in a state of honour, content, and comfort’ (Introduction, p. xvi). However, his intention falls far short of the mark as he unwittingly recommends unmarried women to a servile and self-effacing role, presumes a strict correlation between virginity and the unmarried state and generally implies them to be an inferior subsection of an already subservient sex.

First published by Thomas Cadell in 1785, this was a widely read work, with second and third editions following in 1786 and 1793. This is the only Dublin edition. It is an important source for contemporary attitudes to a host of interesting minor characters in the fiction of the age.

A delightful copy of a scarce novel which, as pointed out in the Monthly Review 1782, is misleadingly titled, as the large part of the novel is occupied with the life of Viscount Cherington’s father, Dr Castleford, and takes place, not in Portugal, but in Brazil. Matters of Church and State determine much of the action and the suppression of the Jesuits is a dominating theme. Once one becomes accustomed to the rather surprising switches between generations and the inclusion of detailed back stories, it makes for a fascinating read, with lively descriptions of Brazil, Portugal and Essex, religious intolerance, piracy and smuggling.
In the opening chapters we learn about the hero’s father, Dr. Castleford, who, having trained as a physician in Paris, obtains employment at the English factory in Oporto. While here he is unjustly accused and is subsequently banished ‘by the villainous artifices of a Jesuit’. He is sent as a prisoner of State to Rio de Janero, where he wins the esteem and confidence of the Viceroy - ‘so far a true Portuguese Fidalgo, that ignorance and superciliousness, with a slavish subordination to the church, constituted the leading features of his character’ - and his wife, whose ‘strong natural parts, sound judgement and great degree of penetration’ largely compensated for an entire lack of education. Castleford’s relationship with these two powerful figures is assured after he cures the lady of a terrible illness, after her own physicians had failed to do so. Subsequently, he falls in love, happily and mutually, with Arabella, a young Englishwoman under their protection and the two are married, the wedding a very splendid affair which is described in detail. Further digressions now intervene not only about Arabella’s birth and education but, in keeping with this multi-generational tale, about the story of her parents’ marriage, her father’s trade in Jamaica, attack by pirates, marooning on the isle of Cuba, and, crucially, Arabella’s mother’s Catholicism, which had become a great problem for her in the Essex village where she lived, as the neighbours declared her ‘to be no better than a papist, or a presbyterian’. After this, Arabella’s mother is keen to leave England and accompany her husband to Portugal. Having lost so much of his money in his last trip to the West Indies, he strikes up a business arrangement with a London bookseller and agrees to take out with him a consignment of prohibited books to be sold in Portugal. The bookseller sends two agents with the books to help with their delivery and as soon as they find themselves approaching Portugal, they appear, much to everyone’s surprise, dressed as Jesuits, although not yet knowing that the Jesuits have been expelled from Portugal. On arrival, the customs officials reported the prohibited books and the Jesuits and all four, plus the baby son born on board, are thrown into separate dungeons. We also hear that the bookseller to whom the books were bound, had everything in his shop confiscated before also being imprisoned.
The London edition was published by Joseph Johnson in 1782 and is similarly scarce, with ESTC (t70710) listing copies at BL, Birmingham, Cambridge, Glasgow and DLC; OCLC adds Nebraska and Chapel Hill. This Dublin edition does not appear to be held outside the British Isles.

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.

One of a spate of editions of this best-selling novel, the first semi-fictional account of James Annesley’s tumultuous life, previously attributed to Eliza Haywood (1693-1756). Annesley’s claim to the earldom of Anglesey, one of the wealthiest estates in Ireland, was visciously refuted by his uncle, Richard Annesley, who wanted him out of the way so badly that he had him kidnapped at the age of 12 and shipped to a plantation in Delaware where he was sold into indentured servitude. After several attempts to regain his freedom, James finally escaped to Philadephia and onwards to Jamaica. Here, being recognised by a former school friend, he signed on with the Royal Navy and served for a year under the command of Admiral Vernon. After his return home in 1741, when he accidentally killed a man during a hunting excursion in Scotland, his uncle seized the opportunity to try and get James hanged for murder, but the case was unsuccessful due to witnesses of the accident. The court case for the earldom and the lands then begun, with James being defended by the Scottish barrister Daniel Machercher. Not only was the case a cause celèbre which captured the popular imagination - elements of Annesley’s extraordinary life live on in Smollett’s Peregrine Pickle, 1751, Scott’s Guy Mannering, 1815 and Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped - it was also a key trial in the formulation of many important legal precedents.
Although this is complete as published, two further parts later appeared, the second under the title ‘Memoirs of an unfortunate nobleman in which is continued the history of Count Richard’, published later in 1743, and the third part, under the same title as the present first part, followed in 1747. The present edition, which may be the first, is distinguished from other editions of the same year and same collation, by the following points: the second line of the imprint ends ‘and sold’, the catchword on p. 1 is ‘words’ and the vignette on p. 1 is a cherub (in an expansive pastoral scene, looking at a bird through a telescope).

Provenance: with the attractive contemporary armorial bookplate of Bartholomew Richard Barneby, who changed his surname from Lutley to Barneby in 1735, ‘pursuant to the will of John Barneby’ (see the Office of Public Sector Information website). The Barnebys (they were subsequently to change their name to Barneby-Lutley in the nineteenth century) lived at Brockhampton Park, near Bromyard, Hereforshire, until 1946 and the estate is now property of the National Trust.

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.

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.

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.

A delightful illustrated guidebook to Cambridge aimed at the new undergraduate and his family, as well as the tourist, with plentiful information on the town and its facilities in addition to a description of the university. Benefactors are listed for the main public buildings such as the Senate House, the Public and New Library and the Botanic Garden. Colleges are then described in some detail, with information on their foundation, notable buildings and art works, benefactors and eminent past scholars. The finances and development plans are also included for some colleges, such as for Trinity Hall (’an Hall surpassing All’) which ‘stands out of the town upon the banks of the river... this college is intended to be greatly enlarged by the addition of two wings or buildings, extending from the present college to the river, so as to leave the view open to the country’. It is also noted that this development is to be funded by a benefaction from John Andrews, ‘which being bequeathed in 1747, to come to the college after the death of two sisters, cannot be long before it falls’.
This is a reissue of the first edition, published in 1796, with the ‘Useful Tables’ on pp. i-iv on cancelled leaves, bearing the date 1797, in place of 1796. These tables contain information on the names of the office holders and professors, term dates and militia officers. The frontispiece is a folding map entitled ‘Plan of Cambridge 1791’ and is signed ‘S.I. Neele scuplt. 352 Strand London’. The ten engraved plates all depict landmarks of the university: the Senate House, two of Clare Hall (College), two of Kings College, Queen’s College, Catherine Hall, two of Trinity College and one of Emanuel [sic] College.

This scarce Dublin edition is one of three distinct English language editions of Voltaire’s wonderful conte philosophique to be published in 1768, each with a different collation and no mention of a translator’s name. The other editions were published in London by S. Bladon and in Glasgow by Robert Urie. Voltaire’s tale, which first appeared in 1767, is one of the great literary exemplars of the noble savage: the corruption and absurdities within French society are shown in stark contrast to the nobility of the eponymous hero, who reacts with simple directness to everything, with comic and tragic results.

One of Beckford’s most readable and entertaining works, his Recollections of an Excursion to the Monasteries of Alcobaça and Batalha is an idealised compression of several visits to Portugal into one single twelve-day journey, based on diary notes made during a visit in 1794 - a trip during which he did not actually visit Batalha at all. However, it was his visits to Batalha which enchanted him and which inspired him in his designs for Fonthill Abbey, even though his impressions were not published until so many years after the event.
‘[Beckford’s] Recollections of an Excursion to the Monasteries of Alcobaça and Batalha is a charming, heavily humorous concoction... some biographers rate this short piece as his finest writing, and it is indeed a delightful evocation of a lost world, authentic in detail even if contrived in construction’ (Timothy Mowl, William Beckford: Composing for Mozart, 1998, pp. 217-300).

First edition of Beckford’s wonderful letters from the Continent, written ‘in the bloom and heyday of youthful spirits and youthful confidence’ (Advertisement). The first volume focuses on his two visits to Italy, in a total of 31 letters, but it also contains thoughts on visits to Germany and the Low Countries, as well as to the French Alps, including a brief description of the Carthusian monastery la Grande Chartreuse. The second volume has 34 letters about Portugal and 18 letters about Spain.

'Had it been published as intended in 1783, instead of as late as 1834 in a revised version under the title Italy, with Sketches of Spain and Portugal, it would have been hailed as an ice-breaker, preparing the way for the nineteenth century's stylistic eclecticism' (Timothy Mowl, William Beckford, Composing for Mozart, 1998, p. 92).

First edition of Beckford’s wonderful letters from the Continent, written ‘in the bloom and heyday of youthful spirits and youthful confidence’ (Advertisement). The first volume focuses on his two visits to Italy, in a total of 31 letters, but it also contains thoughts on visits to Germany and the Low Countries, as well as to the French Alps, including a brief description of the Carthusian monastery la Grande Chartreuse. The second volume has 34 letters about Portugal and 18 letters about Spain.

'Had it been published as intended in 1783, instead of as late as 1834 in a revised version under the title Italy, with Sketches of Spain and Portugal, it would have been hailed as an ice-breaker, preparing the way for the nineteenth century's stylistic eclecticism' (Timothy Mowl, William Beckford, Composing for Mozart, 1998, p. 92).

Presentation copy of this limited edition of Christopher Thacker’s new translation of Voltaire’s Candide, commissioned and elegantly published by Thacker’s great friend, Michael Mitchell, at the Libanus Press. When Thacker was working on this, he and his wife, Thomasina, used to make regular visits to the Mitchells in Marlborough in order to discuss the illustrations with Angela Barrett. ‘His widow Caroline and I’, writes Thomasina, ‘could hear peals of laughter as they decided which incidents best reflected Voltaire’s wit and naughtiness, the latter so happily matching their own. Angela was well known and admired for illustrating books for children so this was a new excitement and one she clearly relished’.

Thacker’s new translation is printed in parallel text with Voltaire’s original text: ‘A folio production using a dual text: the original 18th-century French of Voltaire and a new English translation by Christopher Thacker, Voltaire scholar and writer on gardens and the 18th century’. The stunning illustrations are by Angela Barrett and comprise a suite of 14 pen and ink drawings. With an introduction by Thacker and ‘a full set of original sources revised for the modern reader’.

This is a limited edition of 125 copies, 100 standard copies and 25 special copies, set in 14pt Monotype Fournier, printed letterpress on 180gms Lana Royal rag paper. This is one of 25 special copies offered with set of the Angela Barrett prints on Zerkall paper in a folder, preserved in a cloth-covered solander box. This copy is marked ‘Presentation Copy’ under ‘This is Copy no.’ on the edition statement leaf, and has been inscribed by Christopher Thacker in pencil on the verso of the half-title: ‘P/7 copy --- pas mal, Christopher’.

A scarce edition of this popular pocket dictionary in unusual square format. The preliminary leaves contain an advertisement, dated May 27th 1787, a short preface, ‘A Grammatical Introduction to the English Tongue’ and finally ‘A Table of Words that are alike, or nearly alike, in Sound, but different in Spelling and Signification’. The interesting appendices include ‘the most usual Christian Names of Men and Women’, which makes an amusing comparison with the primary school roll call of today, ‘A Succinct Account of the Heathen Gods and Goddesses, Heroes and Heroines, &c. deduced from the best Authorities’ and a list of all the cities, boroughs, market towns and villages in England and Wales, which confirms that Salisbury’s market days have remained unchanged.
Happily unrestored, this is a sublimely tatty copy, that leaves little of its manufacture to the imagination.

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.