BOLTON, Robert.

Letters and Tracts on the Choice of Company and other Subjects. The second Edition.

London: Printed for J. Whiston and B. White … and R. and J. Dodsley … 1762.

Second edition; a reissue of the sheets of the first edition with a cancel title-page and advertisement replacing the original title leaf A1. As well as the title tract, the volume includes essays ‘On Intemperance in Eating’, ‘On Intemperance in Drinking’, ‘On Pleasure’ and ‘On Public Worship’,...

£325

BROWNING, Elizabeth Barrett.

Poems before Congress …

London: Chapman and Hall … 1860.

First edition of a slender collection of seven poems on the cause of Italian independence, and one attacking slavery in the United States (‘A Curse for a Nation’). The Congress of the title had been planned for Paris in January 1860, but Austria withdrew on learning that Napoleon III meant to use...

£200

[BURY, Lady Charlotte].

The Exclusives. In three Volumes ...

London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley ... 1830.

First edition of a society novel written after the enormous success of Marianne Spencer Stanhope’s Almack’s (1826), a roman à clef centred on the fashionable assembly rooms in St. James’s. In The Exclusives Lady Tilney plans a new coterie as Almack’s is in decline (‘that...

£950

[BUTLER, John].

Some Account of the Character of the late Right Honourable Henry Bilson Legge.

London: Printed for J. Almon … 1764.

First edition. Henry Bilson Legge (1708-1764), three times chancellor of the exchequer between 1754 and 1761, attracted both respect and censure. To Pitt, he was ‘the child, and deservedly the favourite child, of the Whigs’. Horace Walpole, on the other hand, thought him a man ‘of a creeping, underhand...

£200

CAMPBELL, Thomas.

Autograph letter, signed, to the novelist and socialite Lady Morgan, explaining why he cannot join her party.

‘Wednesday Morning’, no date, but late 1840.

‘I have been dying also several times during the last six months – I hope however to survive a few weeks when I shall be nearer to you when, in my new house in Victoria Square, I shall hope to see you frequently.’ Campbell suffered increasing ill health towards the end of his life, but continued...

£175

CARR, Lisle.

Judith Gwynne …

Henry S. King & Co. … London, 1873

First edition, a scarce romance-cum-society novel.

£200

[CHINESE HELL.]

YU LI BAO CHAO [The Jade Guidebook].

c. 1859.

An attractive edition of the Jade Guidebook or Jade Alamanac, a guide to the ten kingdoms of hell with origins in folk Confucianism and Buddhism of the 10th-11th centuries.

£1250

COWLEY, John.

The Candidates Guide: or the Electors Rights decided. Shewing the Resolutions of the Honble the Commons of Great...

London: Printed for J. Brindley ... and sold by Mrs. Dodd ... and by the Booksellers of London and Westminster: likewise in most great Towns...

First edition of a guide to electoral rights ‘from the controverted Election for New-Castle-Under-Line, in April 1624, to that of Weymouth in May 1730’.

£450

CROMARTY, George Mackenzie, Earl of.

An historical Account of the Conspiracies by the Earls of Gowry, and Robert Logan of Restalrig,...

First edition, dedicated to Queen Anne, ‘and to all the Princes who share in her royal blood’. The Vindication of Robert III was first published in 1695.

£150

D’ISRAELI, Isaac.

Romances …

London: Printed for Cadell and Davies … Murray and Highley … J. Harding … and J. Wright. 1799.

First edition, a collection of three prose tales by the father of the novelist and Prime Minister, with an introductory ‘Poetical Essay on Romance and Romancers’. The longest piece is ‘Mejnoun and Leila, the Arabian Petrarch and Laura’, which has echoes of Beckford and draws on the learned orientalism...

£950

D’URFEY, Thomas.

The Progress of Honesty: or, a View of a Court and City. A Pindarique Poem …

London: Printed for Joseph Hindmarsh … 1681.

First edition of an allegorical poem inspired, like Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel, by the Exclusion Crisis of 1681. ‘Honesty’ describes to ‘Error’, ‘Faction’ and ‘Beauty’ the court of Charles II (‘Titus the Second … the joy of human kind’), and the malign effects of Treason...

£300

[JUVENILE.] DAY, Thomas.

The History of Sandford and Merton, abridged from the Original. Embellished with elegant Plates … Third...

London:

Third edition of Richard Johnson’s abridgement of Day’s most famous and most enduring children’s book (1783, with sequels in 1786 and 1789), first published in this form in 1790. ESTC shows three copies of the first edition; five of the second; and BL and UCLA only of this third; Roscoe adds a...

£200

[DEFOE, Daniel].

A Letter to the Dissenters.

London: Printed for John Morphew … 1713.

First edition, the state with p. 48 numbered correctly. This tract is an admonition to Defoe’s fellow Dissenters, ‘saying that they enjoy great privileges at present, the Queen having undertaken to maintain the Toleration Act and even having for long resisted the Act against Occasional Conformity....

£750

DENNIS, John.

The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry, contain’d in some new Discoveries never made before, requisite for the Writing...

London, Printed for Geo. Strahan … and Bernard Lintott … 1704.

First edition. Published as a ‘preliminary’ to a proposed, but never completed, masterwork, The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry comprises a Preface, Proposal and ‘Specimen’, the latter being an essay substantially on Milton, ‘one of the greatest and most daring Genius’s that has appear’d...

£1250

DIBDIN, C[harles], the younger.

Mirth and Metre: consisting of Poems, serious, humorous, and satirical; Songs, Sonnets, Ballads,...

London: Printed for Vernor, Hood, and Sharpe ... by W. Wilson. 1807

First edition of the first collection of verse by the manager of Sadler’s Wells, including a section of songs from his ‘most approved’ pantomimes and ‘scenic’ productions. The ticket of a Newark bookseller makes it likely that the stamp ‘Newstead’ refers to Byron’s ancestral home, Newstead...

£225

DICKENS, Charles.

Mäster Humphreys Klocka … Förra [–Sednare] Delen.

Stockholm, Hos. L. J. Hjerta, 1842.

First edition in Swedish, very rare, of Master Humphrey’s Clock (1840-1), comprising the framing narrative of short stories, followed by The Old Curiosity Shop (‘Den Gamla Antiqvitets-boden’). Barnaby Rudge, omitted here, was published separately in 1845.

£850

DILWORTH, W. H.

The History of the Conquest of Mexico, by the celebrated Hernan Cortes. Containing a faithful and entertaining...

London: Printed for William Anderson … 1759.

First edition, very scarce, of a history of the conquistadores for young readers, loosely derived from Antonio Solís de Ribadeneyra’s Historia de la Conquista de México.

£1850

[DISNEY, John].

Memoirs of Thomas Brand-Hollis Esq. ...

London: Printed by T. Gillet ... 1808.

First edition of a privately printed memoir of Thomas Brand of the Hyde, who assumed the name Brand-Hollis on inheriting the Dorset estates (and library and collection of sculpture) of his friend the ‘Republican’ Thomas Hollis, the Whig bibliophile. The author, John Disney, a close friend of Thomas...

£750

DUTENS, Louis.

An Inquiry into the Origin of the Discoveries attributed to the Moderns: wherein it is demonstrated, that our most...

London: Printed for W. Griffin … 1769.

First edition in English of Recherches sur l’origine des découvertes attribuées aux modernes (Paris, 1766), an illuminating and voluminous study of how ‘in almost all truths of the greatest importance, the ancients preceded the moderns; or at least pointed out, or prepared the way, for their...

£300

EYRE, Henry.

A Brief Account of the Holt Waters, containing one Hundred and Twelve eminent Cures, perform’d by the Use of the...

London: Printed for J. Roberts … 1731.

First edition. The waters from Bath, Bristol and Holt, in Wiltshire, were the most popular English mineral waters of the eighteenth century, in no small part due to the activity of Henry Eyre, ‘Sworn Purveyor to Her Majesty [Queen Caroline, wife of George II] for all Mineral Waters’. Eyre ran a distribution...

£750