Search results
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FIDDES, Richard.
A General Treatise of Morality, form’d upon the Principles of natural Reason only. With a Preface in Answer...
London: Printed for S. Billingsley … 1724.
First edition, the variant with the misprint ‘FIDDFS’ in the author’s name on the title. ‘Written against Shaftesbury’s Inquiry Concerning Virtue and Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees, and displaying marked sympathy with the works of Malebranche and [John] Norris of Bemerton, this book was a...
£850
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FIELDING, Henry.
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling …
Paris: Printed by Fr. Amb. Didot the eldest, and sold by J. N. Pissot, and Barrois Junior … Booksellers. 1780.
The first French edition in English of Fielding’s masterpiece, only the second English edition to be printed abroad (after Dresden, 1774). Here the text benefits from critical attention by Didot, who collated Murphy’s edition of Fielding’s Works with the last separate English edition.
£425
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[BYRON.] FINDEN, Edward.
[Landscape and Portrait Illustrations of Byron.]
[London, John Murray, 1833-4.]
Finden’s attractive engraved illustrations to the works of Byron, taken after drawings and paintings by Turner, Stanfield, Weston etc, and his portraits of the Romantics after paintings in the Murrays’ collection, were published in parts by John Murray in 1833-4. Here they have been assembled from...
£850
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[FRYER, Michael, editor.]
The Trial and Life of Eugene Aram; several of his Letters and Poems; and his Plan and Specimens of an...
Richmond: Printed by and for M. Bell … 1832
First edition. The unfortunate Yorkshire schoolmaster Eugene Aram, implicated with the shoemaker Daniel Clark in fraud in 1745, and twelve years later accused of Clark’s murder, was convicted and hanged in 1759. While in prison in York, without books and papers, he produced the Plan and Specimens published...
£100
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GAY, John.
The Distress’d Wife. A Comedy. By the late Mr. Gay, Author of the Beggar’s Opera.
London: Printed for Thomas Astley … 1743.
First edition, the issue with no press figures on pp. 8, 39, press figure p. 56: 3 (no priority). Gay’s comedy of the sexes revolves around Sir Thomas Willit’s attempts to inveigle his wife to leave London for the country, in order to reign-in her expenditure. Lady Willit abhors the idea, ‘Sure...
£350
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GENUINE ACCOUNT (A)
of the Life and Actions of James Maclean, Highwayman, to the Time of his Trial and receiving Sentence at the...
London, W. Falstaff, [1750].
First edition, the scarcer of two contemporary pamphlet biographies of the ‘gentleman highwayman’ James Maclaine (1724-1750). The son of a Scottish Presbyterian minister, Maclaine, having squandered an early inheritance and his wife’s money, joined up with a down-at-luck apothecary, William Plunkett,...
£1250
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GLAISTER, Elizabeth.
The Perfect Path. A Novel … in two Volumes …
London, Smith, Elder, & Co. … 1884.
First and only edition, scarce. The novel opens among a group of English expatriates in Mentone on the French Riviera, where Colonel Ashby wastes money at Monte Carlo. His spirited, ‘slangy’ and distinctly wayward daughter, Cordelia, is invited to live with her aunt in rural England, where her greatest...
£450
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GLOVER, John.
The Hidden and happy Life of a Christian, amidst a Variety of Trials and Afflictions incident to the present State,...
London: Printed by R. Hawes … and sold by Mr. Buckland, Bookseller … and Mr. Keith … London; Mr. Booth, at Norwich; Mr. Punchard, at...
First edition, very scarce: the spiritual diary of the evangelical Calvinist John Glover from its commencement in 1764 until shortly before his death ten years later. The diary revolves around anxiety about temptations, spiritual withdrawal and silent prayer, and the solace Glover draws from religious...
£450
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[GOLDSMITH, Oliver].
A History of England, in a Series of Letters from a Nobleman to his Son. To which are added two Letters on...
Basil: Printed and sold by James Decker. Paris, sold by Levrault frères … 1800.
First Swiss edition of Goldsmith’s popular history (first published 1764), ‘a proper guide for the instruction of boys’; this was the second Continental edition, following that of Paris in 1788.
£350
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[GRANVILLE, George, Baron Lansdowne].
Poems upon several Occasions.
London: Printed for J. Tonson … 1712.
First edition; containing ‘all the Poems which have been written by the Right Honourable George Granville Lord Lansdown, very few of which have been ever before printed’. Granville (1666-1735) wrote his first play, The She-Gallants, at age 15, and his adaptation of Shakespeare, The Jew...
£350
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[GRATTAN, Thomas Colley].
The Heiress of Bruges; a Tale of the Year Sixteen Hundred … In four Volumes …
London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley … 1830.
First edition of Grattan’s first novel, a sprawling historical romance set in the Low Countries during the time of Spanish occupation, charting the fortunes of the eponymous heiress and her numerous suitors alongside the military upsets of the period. It was ‘one of the best historical romances of...
£450
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HALL, Major Herbert Byng.
The Adventures of a Bric-a-Brac Hunter …
London: Tinsley Brothers … 1868.
First edition of a charming travel guide to Europe for the dilletante porcelain collector; some of the sketches that make up the book first appeared in the Belgravia magazine.
£275
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HAY, William.
Mount Caburn. A Poem. Humbly inscribed to Her Grace the Dutchess of Newcastle …
London: Printed for J. Stagg … 1730.
First edition. Hay’s only original poetic composition, Mount Caburn is a celebration of his native Sussex, historical, antiquarian and archaeological, as viewed from a hill fort on the South Downs near Lewes. The poem is dedicated to Henrietta Pelham-Holles, wife of the secretary of state, hinting...
£375
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HAZLITT, William.
Conversations of James Northcote, Esq., R.A. …
London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley … 1830.
First edition of Hazlitt’s final book, an inflammatory collection of gossip published just weeks before his death. ‘All the ill-nature in the book is Northcote’s; and all, or almost all, the talent’s, Hazlitt’s’ (Examiner, May 1833).
£200
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HAZLITT, William.
Conversations of James Northcote, Esq., R.A. …
London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley … 1830.
First edition of Hazlitt’s final book, an inflammatory collection of gossip published just weeks before his death. ‘All the ill-nature in the book is Northcote’s; and all, or almost all, the talent, Hazlitt’s’ (Examiner, May 1833).
£250
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HEADLEY, Henry, editor.
Select Beauties of ancient English Poetry …
London, Printed for T. Cadell … 1787.
First edition. This important miscellany – which would have been continued had not the young editor died in 1788 at the age of twenty-three – explores some of the byways of Elizabethan and early Stuart poetry. After a long introductory appreciation with biographical sketches of the poets, the verse...
£675
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HILL, Richard, Sir.
Logica Wesleiensis: or, the Farrago double distilled. With an heroic Poem in Praise of Mr. John Wesley …
London: Printed for E. and C. Dilly … J. Matthews … and W. Harris … 1773.
First and only edition, a somewhat eccentric reproof of Wesley’s increasingly strident attacks on Calvinism (and on Hill himself).
£575
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HILL, Rowland.
Journal of a Tour through the North of England and Parts of Scotland. With Remarks on the present State of the established...
London: Printed by T. Gillet … and sold at Surr[e]y Chapel; also by T. Chapman [and seven others in London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow]. 1799
First edition, an account of a Scottish tour conducted in July –September 1798 by the eccentric evangelical preacher Rowland Hill, followed by lengthy remarks on the Scottish church in a letter to the Baptist minister James Haldane. There is another issue with the title Journal through the North...
£325
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[HILL, ‘Sir’ John].
A Night Scene at Ranelagh on Wednesday 6th of May 1752. Thus I bore my point; six rogues in buckram let...
[London], May 29 Publish’d … by H. Carpenter … [1752]
Sole edition. The self-styled ‘Sir’ John Hill, sometime a physician and an actor, is best known for the ‘Paper War’ in 1751-2 between his ‘Inspector’ columns in the London Daily Journal and Fielding’s Covent-Garden Journal. It began in good humour but soon turned to real antagonism...
£650
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HOLE, Richard.
Remarks on the Arabian Nights’ Entertainment; in which the Origin of Sinbad’s Voyages, and other oriental Fictions,...
London: Printed for T. Cadell, Junior, and W. Davies, Successors to Mr. Cadell … 1797.
First edition of a whimsical but erudite treatise ‘first read at the meeting of a Literary Society in Exeter’, where members included Richard Polwhele. After initial scepticism, Hole’s research led him to conclude the narratives had a basis in fact. Hole went on to write a parallel work on Homer,...
£650