Eighteenth Century

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[RIDPATH, George.] ~ Parliamentary right maintain'd or the Hanover succession justify'd. Wherein The Hereditary Right to the Crown of England asserted &c. Is Consider'd, in III. Parts. The Ist Examins the Plea from Scripture. The II. That from the Laws & History of England, for Indefeasible Right, Nonresistance & Disposition of the Crown by Will. The III. Whether the Parliament, can repeal the Hanover Succession, as now Establish'd by the Treaty of Union. With Reflections on the Treasonable Schemes of the Party, as they occurr in their Book: & Particularly that of a new lurking pretender.

[London?],  1714.
£300.00
US$448.74*







BERTHOLLET, Claude Louis. ~ Elements of the art of dyeing... translated from the French by William Hamilton...

London: by Stephen Couchman, and sold by J. Johnson,  1791.
First edition in English, very scarce, of Berthollet's important scientific contribution to the burgeoning European textile industry. Having collaborated with Lavoisier on the latter's pioneering chemical nomenclature and presented some seventeen memoirs to the Academy, the author was already an influential chemist when appointed inspector of dye works and director of the Manufacture Nationale des Gobelins in 1784. The Gobelins had their origins in the workshops of Flemish weavers brought to Paris by Henri IV in 1602 and were formally established by Colbert in 1667 as the "Royal Manufactury of Furnishings to the Crown". They became the pre-eminent centre for tapestry weaving in EuropeIn the Éléments de l'art de la teinture Berthollet "endeavored to place the ancient craft of dyeing on a scientific basis by a systematic discussion of its procedures, coupled with an attempt to find an adequate set of theoretical principles to explain the chemical actions involved. His explanation was that, depending on the variable physical conditions of temperature, quantity of solvent employed, and so forth, when a cloth was dyed the reciprocal affinities of the particles of the dye, the mordants, and the cloth itself were responsible for the kind and quality of dyeing. The colors produced were due to the oxidation of the mordant by the atmosphere" (DSB).The British edition appeared in the same year as the French, reflecting the market for such a treatise in a country where textile production was becoming one of the most important national industries. A second British edition appeared at Edinburgh the following year and several reprints appeared in the nineteenth century, presumably a measure of the popularity and utility of this scientific manual of dyeing in the British industrial revolution.   view more...
£1300.00
US$1944.53*






SANTORINI, Giovanni Domenico, (edited by Michael GIRARDI).  ~ Anatomici summi septemdecim tabulae quae nunc primum edit atque explicat iisque alias addit de structura mammarum et de tunica testica vaginali....

Parma: ex Regia Typographia,  1775.
First edition of one of the finest anatomies of the eighteenth century. Santorini (1681-1737) "worked as both a practicing physician and teacher-anatomist in Venice and was known to be one of the most careful and fastidious anatomists of his period. This work, edited by Michael Girardi (1731-97) and issued . . . after Santorini's death, contains illustrations of many parts of the human body, including the organs of smell and hearing, the pharynx, breasts, heart, stomach, liver, intestines, pancreas, and bladder. Of the 21 plates in the book, 17 were by Santorini, and each plate is accompanied by a companion outline plate that is marked with reference letters. The book is one of the finest anatomies of the 18th century because of its excellent illustrations and comprehensive commentary" (Heirs of Hippocrates)."Santorini died before the completion of these anatomical plates which he intended to be his chef d'œuvre. This elegrantly printed volume is the only significant medical book printed by the celebrated Giambattista Bodoni for the Duke of Parma... All the twenty-one prints of the work are done in a light crayon effect which, however, does not impair the anatomic clarity of the prints, but even brings out well the differences in the tissues. Each plate is accompanied by an outline plate which is marked with reference letters. The seventeen plates by Santorini have a ruled margin at the top and on the side, like the Eustachian plates, but have no signatures of the artists. They were drawn by Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, who made the coppers for Tasso's Gierusalemme Liberata. A woman, Florentia Marcella, engraved Santorini's plates under Santorini's personal supervision. The work belongs to the best of its time., not only as regards the dissections and illustrations, but also as to the very elaborate commentary. The pictures deal with facial muscles, the base of the brain and other parts of the brain, the organs of smell and hearing, the pharynx, the breasts, the heart, the diaphragm with the beginning of the thoracic duct, the stomach, the liver, the intestines, the pancreas, the ileocaecal valve., the bladder, the muscles of the perineum, and the genitals. Covoli's pictures represent the breasts, the tunics of the testicle and a six months' foetus" (Choulant, pp. 263-64). Copies only rarely contain the portrait: it is lacking in the copies described in Norman, Heirs of Hippocrates and Choulant.   view more...
£1800.00
US$2692.43*














M'QUHAE, William. ~ The difficulties which attend the practice of religion, no just argument against it. A discourse from James, chapter I, verse 12.

Edinburgh: by Balfour and Smellie,  1775.
First and only edition of M'Quhae's only published work, a sermon preached in the presence of Charles, Lord Cathcart. M'Quhae, though unprolific in published work, had been a major influence on the young James Boswell, who had written his early "Journal of My Jaunt, Harvest 1762" for M'Quhae and John Johnston. The 21-year-old Boswell had met M'Quhae in 1761 and found in him a firm and sympathetic friend. "Only three years Boswell's senior, he had come into Lord Auchinleck's household as domestic tutor... By that time Boswell himself had passed beyond the need of a tutor's ministrations, and was able to associate with the new governor on purely social and friendly terms, M'Quhae's manliness pleased him greatly. At the University of Glasgow he had been a favourite pupil of Adam Smith; he was well educated, loved polite literature, and, though he had decided to be a clergyman in the country, was not without a relish for the scenes of active life" (Pottle, Boswell, Earlier Years, p. 75-6). The friendship did not however survive Boswell's European tours and M'Quhae lived a relatively quiet life as minister of St Quivox from 1764. He became, however, a respected member of the "New Licht" faction within the Church of Scotland, a movement which reflected the liberal attitudes of the Enlightenment against the conservative and Calvinsist "Old Licht faction". Burns humorously referred to him in "The Twa Herds" as "That curs'd rascal ca'd M'Quhae", and mentioned also "M'Quhae's pathetic manly sense."   view more...
£1500.00
US$2243.69*













































THOMSON, John. ~ The universal calculator; or the merchant's, tradesman's, and family's assistant. Being an entire, new, and complete set of tables, adapted for dealers in every branch of trade, by wholesale or retail, and all families. Shewing, at one View, The Amount or Value of any Number or Quantity of Goods or Merchandise, from One to Ten Thousand, at all the various Prices, from One Farthing, in regular progression, to Thirty Shillings; in 280 different Tables. Also, At the foot of each Table is shown the Division of the Pound, Yard, &c. into the following Particulars, entirely new, and not to be found in any other Book, viz. For Dealers by Weight, such as Grocers, &c... For Dealers by Measure, such as Milliners, Haberdashers, &c... There are also added, Twenty-Seven Tables, Shewing the Exchange on Bills, Commission or Brokerage on Goods, &c. from 1/8 to 5 per Cent. and Tables, shewing the amount of any Salary, Income, Expence, &c. by the Day, Week, Month, or Year. By John Thomson, Accomptant in Edinburgh, Author of the Tables of Interest, and Tables for Calculating the Price of all kinds of Grain.

Edinburgh: [Murray & Cochran] for W. Creech and C. Elliot, Edinburgh; and C. Dilly, in the Poultry, London,  1784.
£750.00
US$1121.85*



STRUTT, Joseph. Antoine Marie Henri BOULARD, translator.  ~ Angleterre ancien, ou, Tableau des mœurs, usages, armes, habillemens, &c. des anciens habitans de l'Angleterre; c'est-à-dire, des anciens Bretons, des Anglo-Saxons, des Danois & des Normands. Ouvrage traduit de l'anglois de M. Joseph Strutt, par M. B***, & pouvant servir de suite aux Recueils de Montsaucon & de Caylus.

Paris: [widow Herissant for]: Maradin,  1789.
£750.00
US$1121.85*






£850.00
US$1271.43*


£500.00
US$747.90*











SAINT-PIERRE, Bernardin de. ~ Paul and Virginia. Translated from the French of Bernardin Saint-Pierre; by Helen Maria Williams, author of Letters on the French Revolution, Julia a novel, Poems, &c.

[N.p. but Paris: John Hurford Stone,]   1795.
First edition of this translation, a rare imprint from the English Press at Paris. The origin of this book has caused bibliographers some trouble - with its apparently English typography and use of catchwords, but rather outlandish overall appearance. It is described in some catalogues as being provincial English and it appears in the English Short Title Catalogue. Its true origin has been identified by John Bidwell of the Morgan Library, who writes in the online catalogue of that library "Given the French origins of the paper, type, plates and binding, and the quality of the typesetting, this edition was printed in Paris, almost certainly at the English Press of the expatriate radical John Hurford Stone, who was living with Helen Maria Williams at this time. Cf. Madeleine B. Stern, "The English Press in Paris and its successors," PBSA 74 (1980): 307-89."The type is indeed of ultimate English origin, being cast from Baskerville's punches by the Dépôt des caractères de Baskerville in Paris, established by Beaumarchais in 1791 and closed ca. 1795-1796. Beaumarchais (who considered Baskerville a genius) purchased the bulk of the Birmingham printer's punches from his widow after his death. Cf. John Dreyfus, "The Baskerville punches 1750-1950", The Library, 5th ser. 5 (1951): 26-48. (also cited by Bidwell).Helen Maria Williams was a central member of an important group of English radicals who had settled in Paris after the Revolution which included Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin and Thomas Paine. She formed an association with the radical printer Stone, who divorced his wife in 1794 and was possibly secretly married to Williams that year. Paul and Virginia was translated at the height of the Terror, when Williams was imprisoned in the Couvent des Anglaises on account of the war between England and France. Stone's English Press remained active throughout these years in the Rue de Vaugirard, succesfully printing works by authors such as Paine and Joel Barlow.   view more...
£1800.00
US$2692.43*


[CERFVOL, De, pseudonym.] ~ Mémoire sur la population, dans lequel on indique le moyen de la rétablir, & de se procurer un corps militaire toujours subsistant & peuplant.

"Londres" [but Paris],  1768.
First edition of an influential pro-divorce polemic and a significant contribution to the eighteenth-century population debate. Divorce, as opposed to anullment in exceptional circumstances) remained unlawful in France until 1792."The demographic argument for divorce... was made early in the century by Montesquieu, who suggested in his Lettres persanes that the higher birthrate among non-Christian populations was a result of their permitting divorce, Being able to divorce, he suggested, men were more ready to marry and produce children. This argument was taken up and embellished throughout the eighteenth century, for despite the fact that France's population increased by a healthy 30% or more between 1700 and 1800, there was a persistent belief... that France was experiencing a demographic decline. The most imaginative scenario was produced by Cerfvol (a pseudonym), whose rate of divorce tract production rivaled John Milton's: Cerfvol published five works on divorce between 1768 and 1770. The most important of them was his Memoire sur la population (1768) in which he published detailed (though largely spurious) statistics to prove that celibacy was increasing in France at each generation, that generations were failing to reproduce themselves, and that the logical conclusion would be the utter depopulation of France.The principal way to arrest this galloping celibacy and the attendant decline of population, Cerfvol wrote, was to legalize divorce. He recognized other factors at work in population decline - among them incontinence, unequal and excessive taxation, the use of wet nurses, and women's wearing corsets - but, he wrote: "Let us seek the true cause of depopulation nowhere else than in the indissolubility of marriage"" (Phillips, Untying the Knot: a short history of divorce, 1991).The work was suppressed by the Paris Parlement on the 28 February, 1769.   view more...
£750.00
US$1121.85*







(TREATIES). ~ [12 treaties between Britain and her allies following the French declaration of war in 1793] [comprising:] Convention between His Britannick Majesty and the Empress of Russia. Signed at London, the 25th of March, 1793. Published by authority.

London: Edward Johnston,   1793.
A collection of 12 scarce treaties between Britain and her allies following the French declaration of war in 1793 and one further treaty negotiated with Bavaria in 1800. The backbone of the British war policy, these 1793 agreements were designed to create an allied coalition against the French, of which the axis would be Britain and the German powers, with further support from subsidiary powers in the Baltic, Mediterranean and Atlantic. However, the speed and efficiency with which these agreements were signed belies the complex and conflicting aims of each nation and the subsequent rapid disintegration of the policy.Britain's initial admiration for the evolving Revolution in France quickly changed to alarm with the execution of Louis XVI in January 1793, followed by the French declarations of war on Britain and the Dutch Republic on February 1 and Spain on March 7. French war-mongering had already led to the annexation of Savoy, Belgium and the Rhineland in 1792 and French ambitions were spelt out by Danton in the National Convention: "The frontiers of France have been mapped by nature, and we shall reach them at the four corners of the horizon, on the banks of the Rhine, by the side of the ocean and at the Alps. It is there that we shall reach the limits of our Republic."Notably, the first two agreements were conventions signed with Russia, one uniting the two countries as allies against the aggressions of France and securing Russia's cooperation in the naval war, the other being a trade agreement, which finally settled a longstanding commercial dispute between Britain and Russia. Signed on the same day in March 1793, a contemporary commentator wryly noted that it seemed the two powers were competing as to "who shall be most fond and shall kiss the first". However, despite the apparent goodwill on both sides, the conventions never led to full and binding treaties.Similarly, the terms of the convention signed with Prussia unravelled almost as soon as the ink was dry and within two months Frederick William II was demanding significant additional terms. Lord Grenville, Britain's Foreign Secretary, took a dim view of such demands and having first shored up his own position by negotiating a separate agreement with Austria, he initially refused to comply with Prussian requests. However, under pressure from Pitt and Dundas, Grenville was forced to negotiate further with the Prussians, with the result that the Austrians were in turn estranged.Like Russia, the Spanish had their own motives for joining the war and despite the successful signing of the convention of Aranjuez, which committed both parties to explore the prospects of an alliance, a further agreement was never reached. Alliances with Portugal, Sardinia and Sicily proved equally problematic in the following months.   view more...
£1200.00
US$1794.95*


[CAREW, Bampfylde-Moore.] ~ The life and adventures of Bampfylde-Moore Carew, commonly called the King of the beggars. Being An impartial Account of his Life, from his leaving Tiverton School at the Age of Fifteen and entering into a Society of Gipsies; wherein the Motives of his Conduct are related and explained: The great Number of Characters and Shapes he has appeared in through Great Britain, Ireland, and several other Places of Europe: with his Travels twice through great Part of America: Giving a particular account of the origin, government, laws, and customs of the gipsies, with the Method of electing their King. And a dictionary of the cant language used by the mendicants.

London: for J. Buckland, C. Bathurst and T. Davies,  1793.
The celebrated life of a colourful swindler and impostor, first published in 1745 and reprinted numerous times. This is one of two editions printed for Buckland, Bathurst and Davies in 1793. The final 5 pages contain a notable cant dictionary.Carew fell in with a band of gypsies as a wayward young boy. "After a year and a half Carew returned home for a time, but soon after resumed a career of swindling and imposture, which saw him deceive people to whom he had previously been well known. Eventually he embarked for Newfoundland, but stayed only a short time. On his return to England he passed as the mate of a vessel, and eloped with the daughter of a respectable apothecary from Newcastle upon Tyne, whom he later married.Carew soon returned to the nomadic life, and when Clause Patch, a Gypsy king or chief, died Carew was elected his successor. He was convicted of being an idle vagrant, and sentenced to be transported to Maryland. On his arrival he attempted to escape, but was captured and made to wear a heavy iron collar; he escaped again, and encountered some Native Americans, who removed his shackles. On departure he travelled to Pennsylvania. He was then said to have swum the Delaware River, after which he adopted the guise of a Quaker, and made his way to Philadelphia, then to New York, and finally to Boston, where he embarked for England. He escaped impressment on board a man-of-war by pricking his hands and face, and rubbing in bay salt and gunpowder, so as to simulate smallpox" (John Ashton, rev. Heather Shore in Oxford DNB).This biography is variously attributed to Bampfylde Moore Carew himself, to Robert Goadby and to his wife Mrs. Goadby.    view more...
£200.00
US$299.16*
















[BERKELEY, George, editor]; Richard STEELE [preface]; F. M. JANIÇON, translator. ~ Bibliotheque des Dames, contenant des regles génerales pour leur conduite, dans toutes les circonstances de la vie. Ecrite par une dame, & publiée par Mr. le Chev. R[ichard]. Steele, traduite de l'Anglois par Mr. Janiçon. Seconde edition.

Amsterdam: Du Villard et Changuion,   1719-24.
£550.00
US$822.69*



(EROTICA). [SEDAINE, Michel Jean and Pierre Lalmand] ~ La tentation de S. Antoine, ornée de figures et de musique. [Le Pot-Pourri de Loth, orné de figures et de musique.]

"Londres" [Paris: Cazin],   1781.
First edition, de luxe issue on large paper of this pairing of libretti by Sedaine, complete with the 5 erotic plates absent in some copies, on account of their subject-matter.This is a bibliographically complex work. Dutel, in his recent bibliography describes and illustrates an edition of 1781 which has the same plates and pagination (though 1 leaf bearing the word "fin" is bound at the end of the second part in ours, where in his it is bound at the end of the first). However, he cites just "un feuillet de musique gravée" inserted, where ours has a full 20 pages between the 2 parts. Our copy is also clearly different from the point of view of size and paper. His copy measures just 18.8 × 12.4 mm and is apparently on ordinary paper, where ours is notably larger and is luxuriously printed on blue paper and papier vergé. Furthermore, in comparing the 2 title-pages with those he illustrates, while being identical in letterpress details, the typographical ornaments are completely different, though positioned similarly.Dutel also lists a second edition of (Londres, 1782) in even smaller format (18mo) but on blue and thick paper, with an additional part and plate. There were several later editions.Gay cites both 1781 and 1782 editions but it is impossible to tell whether his 1781 edition conforms to ours or Dutel's example, since he gives no pagination or exact size. Of the work he writes: "Ce volume, dont les exemplaires sont très rares, se paierent fort cher aujourd'hui, car lese gravures... sont fort bien exécutées... Tous les curieux de galanteries connaisent ces deux ouvrages, au moins de réputation." he notes the authorship of Sedaine in the first case and suggests Pierre Lalmand as the author of the second. He also admits that their literary quality is "fort mince" being "du pur libertinage" and of a sacrilegious quality.   view more...
£2000.00
US$2991.59*























(MEDICAL MANUSCRIPT.) (BARTHEZ, Joseph Paul). ~ Extraits du cours des vertus des Plantes, Par Mr. Barthez chancelier de l'université de medecine de l'année 1774.

[Montepelier:   1774 or slightly later.]
An extensive notebook on the medicinal virtues of plants, compiled by Joseph Marie Joachim Vigarous de Montagut from lectures given by the great physician Joseph Paul Barthez at the medical school at Montpelier. The lectures evidently comprised a very complete survey of the field and were arranged according to the Linnaean classification of plant taxonomy rather than a medical classification. Each plant is defined using Linnaean names and there follows a brief decription of its uses according a wide variety of previous writers. These include Cullen, Van Helmont, Boerhaave, Jussieu, Fernel, Gesner, Pringle, Fuller, Willis, Sydenham, Linnaeus and Floyer and Barthez's own opinion is then frequently recorded.Viagrous de Montagut evidently attended the Montpelier medical school from an early age. If he made his notes in or soon after they were delivered in 1774, then he must have been just 15 (having been born in 1759). 1774 was the year in which Barthez had been elevated to position of Chancellor at Montpelier. He had been born and educated at Montpelier, taking his doctor's degree in 1753, and then acting as a military physician before becoming joint editor of the Journal des savants and the Encyclopédie méthodique and later returning to Montpelier in 1759. He later became both physician to Louis XVI and an adviser to Napoloeon. He published several influential medical treatises and is remembered as a primary exponent of the theories of vitalism in explaining the nature of biological life.Barthez's autograph letter tipped in to this manuscript is of interest. Probably addressed to Vigarous himself, Barthez recalls having travelled with Vigarous' father as part of the "juri médical" and having recognised the many injustices he had suffered (quite probably in the aftermath of the Revolution). The letter seems to have been sent with a copy of one of Barthez's books. Vigarous published several works himself, including Cours élémentaire de maladies de femmes (1801).   view more...
£1500.00
US$2243.69*




 

[HOLBERG, Ludvig, Baron].  ~ Nicolai Klimii Iter Subterraneum novam telluris theoriam…

Copenhagen and Leipzig: Jacob Preuss,  1741.
First edition. The Subterranean Voyage of Nicolas Klim is one of the classics of speculative and utopian fiction, written fifteen years after Swift's Gulliver's Travels and often compared favourably with that work. It is the first fully developed novel to be set in the earth's interior, a setting which has been utilised countless times in later science fiction. Klim, a poor student, falls through a hole in the earth just outside the Norwegian town of Bergen and finds himself on the inside of the earth's crust. He lands on the planet Nazar (which orbits a sun at the centre of the earth's cavity) where he finds a nation that lives according to the laws of reason and nature. The peasantry are considered very highly and therefore are the most distinguished class in the state; many of the highest offices are held by women, who are in every way equal to the men. Nazar presents an enlightened utopia, very much in the mould of the ideals of Montesquieu and Voltaire (who Holberg admired enormously) but Klim also travels to other states where the perfect state of society is not so fully developed or is perhaps degenerate, allowing a vivid comparison of political, social and philosophical systems.Holberg (like his hero Klim) was a native of Bergen at a time when Norway and Denmark existed as a twin kingdom. He saw himself as a fully European writer and the equal of the French philosophes. The majority of his works, including the present, first appeared in Latin, the universal language. The adventures of Nicolas Klim were immediately popular and were rapidly translated into all the major European languages.   view more...
£2250.00
US$3365.54*


ROBINS, Benjamin. ~ New principles of gunnery: containing, the determination of the force of gun-powder, and an investigation of the difference in the resisting power of the air to swift and slow motions. By Benjamin Robins, F. R. S.

London: for J. Nourse,   1742.
First edition."New Principles of Gunnery transformed ballistics into a Newtonian science. Galileo's vacuum theory was the only practical theory before 1742, but only for low-velocity mortars as demonstrated in Bélidor's Le bombardier français (1731). Robins made it applicable for gunpowder weaponry in general. His key contribution was the invention and utilization of the ballistic pendulum. With Huygens's law of pendulum motion and Newton's law of linear momentum, he deduced the bullet's impact velocity from the subsequent swing angle. Robins then used the ballistic pendulum to verify his interior-ballistics theory, relying on Boyle's law, the thirty-ninth proposition from book one of the Principia, and the pneumatic chemistry techniques of Francis Hauksbee the elder and Stephen Hales. By applying Newton's second law of motion to velocity measurements at varying ranges, Robins also obtained the air-resistance force acting on musket balls. This revealed the significant limitations of Galileo's vacuum ballistics theory and of Newton's air-resistance function when approaching the speed of sound" (Steele in Oxford DNB).Robins was born of Quaker stock in Bath. He was initially self-educated but was later taught by the Newtonian editor Henry Pemberton and became a significant exponent of Newton's physics. He had been elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1727. His New principles of gunnery was widely-read and was translated into German by Euler and also into French.   view more...
£950.00
US$1421.01*






 ~ L'aventurier Chinois.

"A Pekin et se trouve a Paris chez Merigot le Jeune..." [?Paris],  1773.
First edition, rare, of an interesting philosophical novel which has been interpreted as a response to Voltaire's critique of optimisim in Candide. Reflecting the literary vogue for chinoiserie, the tale is set in China and the East Indies. It begins with an elaborate variation of the "lost manuscript" trope as an explanation of the origin of the text. The preface recounts how a Chinese philosopher loses a manuscript to a European merchant who makes a translation of it; while travelling onwards to Alexandria he purchases an Egyptian mummy and wraps it in the pages of his manuscript. Sending both mummy and manuscript to Paris, he finds them confiscated and is himself arrested on arrival. He is released and the mummy restored, while the manuscript somehow finds itself back in circulation aboard a ship of the Compagnie de Indes, travelling the world, where they were used to wrap some "petites miniatures assez indécents". The merchant miraculously comes upon them on a future trip to China, rescuing them and bringing them to publication (the latter playfully explaining the false Peking imprint). This preface is both an amusing variation on the trope and a wry comment on the politics of trade and confiscation of texts in pre-Revolutionary France.The tale itself has been extensively discussed as a repsonse to Voltaire, particularly in relation to the theme of women in an interesting article by A. Owen Aldridge, 'The Vindication of Philosophical Optimism in a pseudo-confucian imitation of Voltaire's Candide', Asian and African Studies 6, 1997, 2, p. 117-125.   view more...
£500.00
US$747.90*



[MAYEUR DE SAINT-PAUL, François.] ~ Le vol plus haut, ou l'espion des principaux théatres de la capitale; contenant une histoire abrégée des acteurs & actrices de ces mêmes theâtres, enrichie d'observations philosophiques & d'anecdotes récréatives. Dedié aux amateurs.

"Memphis: chez Sincere, Libraire réfugié au Puits de la Verité" [?Paris,]  1784.
£850.00
US$1271.43*




 

HOLBERG, Ludvig, Baron. ~ Voyage de Nicolas Klimius dans le monde souterrain, contenant une nouvelle téorie de la terre, et l'histoire d'une cinquiême monarchie inconnue jusqu'à present. Ouvrage tiré de la bibliothéque Mr. B. Abelin; et traduit du latin par Mr. de Mauvillon.

"Copenhague" [but Dresden]: Jaques Preuss,  1741.
First edition in French, published very shortly after the first Latin edition. The Subterranean Voyage of Nicolas Klim is one of the classics of speculative and utopian fiction, written fifteen years after Swift's Gulliver's Travels and often compared favourably with that work. It is the first fully developed novel to be set in the earth's interior, a setting which has been utilised countless times in later science fiction. Klim, a poor student, falls through a hole in the earth just outside the Norwegian town of Bergen and finds himself on the inside of the earth's crust. He lands on the planet Nazar (which orbits a sun at the centre of the earth's cavity) where he finds a nation that lives according to the laws of reason and nature. The peasantry are considered very highly and therefore are the most distinguished class in the state; many of the highest offices are held by women, who are in every way equal to the men. Nazar presents an enlightened utopia, very much in the mould of the ideals of Montesquieu and Voltaire (who Holberg admired enormously) but Klim also travels to other states where the perfect state of society is not so fully developed or is perhaps degenerate, allowing a vivid comparison of political, social and philosophical systems.Holberg (like his hero Klim) was a native of Bergen at a time when Norway and Denmark existed as a twin kingdom. He saw himself as a fully European writer and the equal of the French philosophes. The majority of his works, including the present, first appeared in Latin, the universal language. The adventures of Nicolas Klim were immediately popular and were rapidly translated into all the major European languages.   view more...
£1150.00
US$1720.16*






* Given as a guide only. Based on an exchange rate of £1 = US$1.495795 for the day 10 March 2010 but liable to fluctuate.

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10 March 2010