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BENTHAM, Jeremy. ~ A fragment on government; or, a comment of the commentaries: being an examination of what is delivered on the subject of government in general, in the introduction to Sir William Blackstone's commentaries: with a preface, in which is given a critique on the work at large. Second edition, enlarged.

London: for W. Pickering and E. Wilson,  1823.
£275.00
US$411.34*


 

BENTHAM, Jeremy. ~ A fragment on government; or, a comment on the Commentaries: being an examination of what is delivered on the subject of government in general, in the introduction to Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries: with a preface, in which is given a critique on the work at large. Second edition, enlarged.

London: for W. Pickering and E. Wilson,  1823.
£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*









 

BROUGHAM and VAUX, Henry Peter Brougham, 1st Baron. ~ The present state of the law. The speech of Henry Brougham, Esq., M.P., in the House of Commons, on Thursday, February 7, 1828, on his motion, that an humble address be presented His Majesty, praying that he will graciously be pleased to issue a commission for inquring into the defects occasioned by time and otherwise in the laws of this realm, and into the measures necessary for removing the same.

London: Henry Colburn,  1828.
£125.00
US$186.97*






[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*




[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*



































(FOOD. MANUSCRIPT ACCOUNT BOOK.) [CIEZA, Andres de.] ~ [Account book for the kitchen of the Hospital de Nuestra Señora de la Buena Dicha, Madrid.]

[Madrid,  1674-1675.]
A superbly presented manuscript account book prepared by the clerk of one of Madrid's early hospitals for the poor and destitute. It comprises a full record of daily expenditure for the kitchen of the hospital over two years. Each day contains roughly fifteen entries for staple foods used in preparation of meals for the inmates, mainly for bread, meat, fowl, raisins, wine (red and white) and oil. Other entries are for fuel for cooking, herbs and spices (aniseed and parsley), bran, fish (occasional and seasonal), salads and fruit (also seasonal). Each day is divided into two sections: the first, untitled, represents general expenditure, the second, title "cena" evidently for dinner alone. Each expenditure is noted with amounts probably in maraved' and the totals for each day and week are given. Monthly totals are scrupulously prepared and presented at the end of each year's accounts and provide an interesting index of the fluctuation of expenditure across the seasons. It would be useful (and straightforward) to examine whether these related to seasonal price fluctuations or to some external factor such as the changing number of inmates. The accounts include the occasional purchase of quires of paper, presumably for accounts such as this.Each week at the hospital appears to have been presided over by a "semanero" whose names appear in turn beside the accounts for Sunday. Sundays appear to have witnessed the greatest expenditure, with notably larger amounts spent on the purchase of meat.The hospital was founded in the calle de Silva in 1594 alongside the church of Nuestra Señora de la Buena Dicha and was in the care of the Hermandad de la Buena Dicha. Its twelve rooms catered for the local destitute of the parish of S. Martin.   view more...
£5500.00
US$8226.87*








GATTEY, François. ~ Éléments du nouveau systême métrique, suivis des tables de rapports des anciennes mesures agraires avec les nouvelles...

Paris: Bailly and Rondonneau,  'An X' [1801].
First edition of an important practical guide to the new metric system, designed to counteract the persistence of local customary measurements in the regions of France and containing numerous tables for conversion from the old measures to the new. François Gattey was, with Legendre, one of the members of the convention established in 1795 to enact the definitive adoption of the metric system."One of the most significant results of the French Revolution was the establishment of the metric system of weights and measures....On June 19, 1791, a committee of 12 mathematicians, geodesists, and physicists met with Louis XVI, who gave his formal approval. The next day, the king attempted to escape from France, was arrested, returned to Paris, and was imprisoned; a year later, from his cell, he issued the proclamation that directed two engineers, Jean Delambre and Pierre Méchain, to perform the operations necessary to determine the length of the metre. The intervening time had been spent by the scientists and engineers in preliminary research; Delambre and Méchain now set to work to measure the distance on the meridian from Barcelona, Spain, to Dunkirk in northern France. The survey proved arduous; civil and foreign war so hampered the operation that it was not completed for six years. While Delambre and Méchain were struggling in the field, administrative details were being worked out in Paris. In 1793 a provisional metre was constructed from geodetic data already available. In 1795 the firm decision was taken to enact adoption of the metric system for France. The new law defined the length, mass, and capacity standards and listed the prefixes for multiples and submultiples. With the formal presentation to the assembly of the standard metre, as determined by Delambre and Méchain, the metric system became a fact in June 1799. The motto adopted for the new system was 'For all people, for all time'" (Ency. Brit.).   view more...
£250.00
US$373.95*








HALIFAX, [George SAVILE, Marquis of]. ~ Conseils d'un homme de qualite a sa fille.

London: Matthew Gillyflower,  1697.
A very rare French edition (albeit with "Londres" imprint) of Halifax's Advice to Betty, a counsel for young ladies of high birth on how to behave and manage themselves despite the prevailing inequalities of the sexes. Halifax wrote the book for his young daughter and it was only intended to be privately circulated; however, a pirated edition appeared in 1688 as The Ladies New-Year's Gift, or, Advice to a Daughter and by 1765 it had reached its fifteenth numbered edition, with translations also appearing in French and Italian. An edition with the imprint "chez Jaques Partridge à Charing-Cross, & Matieu Gilliflower dans Westminster-Hall", had appeared in 1692, and ESTC does not list this 1697 edition. Bound with the probable first edition of La Chalotais' revolutionary programme for an enlightened public system of education. The Essai was praised by Voltaire and was widely reprinted in its first year. Several issues are dated 1763, and ours is usually (though not bibliographically certainly) considered the first. La Chalotais was instrumental in dismantling the apparatus of Jesuit education in France, and his programme is his proposal for its replacement. Based on the acquisition of reason before the considerations of religion, the system divides education into primary (up to 10 years) and secondary phases and he here considers the relative merits of letters, history, geography, natural history, mathematics, physics (including astronomy and mechanics), literature, logic and metaphysics. Any study of religion is confined to a tertiary phase.   view more...
£950.00
US$1421.01*









(HUMOROUS DRAWINGS. MANUSCRIPT.) ~ (Album containing 31 pen and ink drawings with calligraphic borders and text, partly in the form of a comic narrative).

[Probably Kintbury, Berkshire, Barton Court or Speen Hill House, , n.d. [c.  1850.]
£2600.00
US$3889.07*

















 
£60.00
US$89.75*









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*








(MANUSCRIPT NOVEL). ~ [A fictional narrative of the adventures of Valsain and Aspaisie and their friends Qisnhy and Carithe in the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Northern Europe and America.]

[?France c.  1800-1801.]
A manuscript novel, almost certainly authorial and unpublished. It is in part a series of imaginary voyages, with a strongly utopian flavour, but fused with various other literary tropes, notably a captivity narrative and strong elements of the eighteenth-century French romans philosophiques and romans du sérail. It also contains long passages of social and political commentary upon the major European powers. This is a remarkable and wide-ranging text, clearly written over a considerable period of time, with several changes of style and with substantial additions and revisions: all in a single hand. The hero, Valsain (a French-born Knight of Malta) is a model of the universal man: widely travelled and educated in the languages and customs of many countries.In the first draft of the manuscript, the action begins almost immediately with the arrival of the Napoleonic fleet off Malta en route for their famous Nile expedition, which Valsain promptly joins. However, a lengthy addition occupying the final 11 pages, tells the story of his life before this and his adventures in North America where he lived for several years after the Wars of Independence, taking his chances as a soldier (a naval engagement between American and British ships is described) and his engagement to an American girl. The engagement was broken only by his need to return to France on a lengthy and much-delayed passage of eighteenth months, finding on his arrival a series of long-out-of-date letters from her family asking for news and finally giving up hope of seeing him again. He also made several expeditions to the Greek Islands, Constantinople, Smyrna and Alexandria. Valsain's adventures with Napoleon are short-lived, since he is captured on his return from Egypt and imprisoned in a cave, from where is rescued by a couple of young women. One of them, Aspasie, a native of the Greek island of Naxos, becomes his lover. In the manner of the conte orientale, she tells him her tale: an education with a French tutor on Naxos, her kidnapping and imprisonment in the harem at Alexandria and her escape from Osman Bey's household when in Egypt. Aspasie is cast as a perfect counterpart for Valsain: noble, European-educated (a perfect fusion of French and Greek culture) but with an uncommon knowledge of the languages and ways of the East. The couple settle on an island in the River Nile, the very model of the utopian household, soon finding another counterpart to their own lives in their friends Qisnhy and his wife Carithe, natives of Abyssinia who came to Egypt with a trading caravan. Conversations between the friends allow the author to engage in a series of allegories: with Qisnhy recounting a series of semi-magical journeys to unknown countries (glossed in the margin in the author's hand: Russia, Poland, Prussia, Great Britain, Spain, Switzerland, Italy, Turkey etc). The descriptions of Britain and France occupy several pages and are clearly comments on the contemporary situation. Britain is characterised as rich, busy and commercially successful but damned by a corrupt political and legal system based on antiquity: two emblematical scenes are recounted: a typical British boxing prize-fight and the sale of a wife. France, by contrast, is depicted as economically troubled by former political strife but blessed with a powerful, visionary and energetic leader, clearly Napoleon himself.The final part of the narrative recounts the return of Valsain and Aspasie to their spiritual and cultural home in Napoleonic France: where Aspasie refinds her French tutor and Valsain finds himself in the service of the Emperor.This text is a significant discovery: and can be read as a richly-layered reflection of cultural attitudes in France at the height of Napoleonic enthusiasm. It contains important cross-cultural reflections on the characteristics of the inhabitants of the world, and the relative importance of innate "natural" traits, language, culture, religion, politics and education. The story is audacious in scope: linking the culture of the Orient with that of Europe and America in the adventures of a single hero, provoking a chain of questions on the European encounter with the rest of the world at this crucial moment of French expansionism and youthful American independence. As a source-text for understanding the nature and extent of Orientalism in France, the story of Valsaim and Aspasie is surely unique.The authorship of the manuscript is, at this stage, unknown. It is interesting to consider the gender the anonymous author. A notable feature of the text is a consistent interest in gender relations and especially in the position of women in society. Those societies (particularly British) which underestimate the potential of women are censured and Aspasie herself is seemingly offered as a model of female culture and education and a perfect equal to her mate, Valsain. One of the many long asides has Aspasie describing the origins and childhood of tutor, Amelie and the sources of her own model education.   view more...
£8000.00
US$11966.36*








 

MILL, John Stuart. ~ Autobiography.

London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer,  1873.
£200.00
US$299.16*











OWEN, Robert. ~ The revolution in the mind and practice of the human race; or, the coming change from irrationality to rationality...

London: Effingham Wilson,  1849.
First edition, presentation copy. As the title suggests, this later work is essentially Owen's response to the European political upheavals of 1848, the year of the Paris Commune and of the publication of Marx and Engels's Communist Manifesto. Since Owen had made his first practical statement of socialist principles in A New View of Society (1813-14) the socialist movement had become the central theme of European politics: "A revolution from wrong to right, from falsehood to truth, from oppression to justice, from deception and misery to straightforward honesty and happiness, has commenced" (Revolution in the mind and practice..., Ch. 3, p. 39). Owen, for his part, had also accrued the experience of his social experiments at New Lanark, New Harmony (United States) and Queenwood. He fundamentally opposed the principle of 'revolutionary socialism' which advocated violence as the only way of fomenting the necessary change in society. The present work opens with envoys both to Queen Victoria and "To the Red Republicans, Communists and Socialists of Europe" - the latter being a stinging reprimand for the mistakes of 1848 in which he accuses the Communists of committing the same errors as their enemies by resorting to violence rather than reason and kindness.The work provides a succinct retrospective account of the New Lanark experiment as an illustration of Owen's principles (and as a mature admission of the limitations of his first experiment) and proceeds to rehearse the basic principles and laws of a genuinely rational society, many of which he had earlier developed in the The Book of the New Moral World (1836-44). A supplement to the work appeared later in 1849.   view more...
£4000.00
US$5983.18*




PASSE PARTOUT (Le) galant par Monsieur **** Chevalier de l'Ordre de l'Industrie & de la Gibeciere.  ~ 

'A Constantinople [i.e. Holland?], A l'Imprimerie de Sa Hautesse',   1710.
£400.00
US$598.32*






 

[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*





£850.00
US$1271.43*






[SHIRLEY, Laurence, fourth Earl Ferrers.]  ~ An Account of the Execution of the late Laurence Earl Ferrers, Viscount Tamworth, and of His Lordship's Behaviour, From the Time of his being delivered into the Custody of the Sherriffs of London and Middlesex, Until the Time of his Execution. By the Authority of the Sherriffs.

London: sold by M. Cooper,  1760.
FIRST EDITION of the scarce licensed report of the celebrated case of the execution of the Fourth Earl Ferrers, Viscount Tamworth, said to have been the "first sufferer by the new drop just then introduced in the place of the barbarous cart, ladder, and mediaeval three-cornered gibbet" (DNB citing All the Year Round and Walpole's Letters). Ferrers had been found guilty of the murder of a household steward whom he had shot at his house at Staunton Harrold, Leicestershire, apparently as a result of a long-held grudge. His execution at Tyburn was a remarkable public spectacle as this report attests. The victim chose to dress for his execution in a pale suit embroidered with silver and was taken from the Tower in his own landau drawn by six horses "instead of the Mourning-Coach which had been provided by his friends" through the streets of London, which were lined with hundreds of thousands of spectators. Maintaining an elegant composure to the last and giving the customary tribute to his executioners (who squabbled over the five guineas he gave them) Ferrers submitted to the new apparatus which did its job with only limited success. The platform "instantly sunk down from beneath his Feet, and left him entirely suspended; but not having sunk down so low as was designed, it was immediately pressed down, and leveled with the rest of the floor." While it is admitted that Ferrers died only when "eased of all Pain by the Pressure of the Executioner" the account denies that the execution was bungled and specifically refutes reports that "his Lordship stood for some time on tip-toe". The account concludes with the conveyance of Ferrers's body to Surgeon's Hall to be dissected and anatomized according to the relatively recent act (25 Geo. II. C. 37 'An Act for Better Preventing the Horrid Crime of Murder').    view more...
£300.00
US$448.74*







STILLINGFLEET, Edward. ~ The unreasonableness of separation: or, An impartial account of the history, nature, and pleas of the present separation from the communion of the Church of England. To which, several late letters are annexed, of eminent Protestant divines abroad, concerning the nature of our differences, and the way to compose them. By Edward Stillingfleet, D.D. Dean of St. Pauls, and chaplain in ordinary to His Majesty.

London: printed by T[homas]. N[ewcomb]. for Henry Mortlock, at the Phoenix in St. Paul's Church-yard,  1681.
First edition of Stillingfleet's major work, urging unity in the Church of England in the face of emerging dissent at home and in the American colonies. It was developed from the author's controversial sermon The Mischief of Separation preached on 11 May 1680 before the whig lord mayor of London, Sir Robert Clayton, which caused a furore among Dissenters. Passionately committed to Protestant unity, Stillingfleet accused the Dissenters of an innate tendency to sectarianism which threatened the entire Protestant enterprise in the face of Catholic resurgency in England."Stillingfleet was clearly taken aback by the opposition to his sermon. In 1683 he produced a major work, The Unreasonableness of Separation, which enlarged upon the earlier sermon. Even if occasional conformity were accepted as the norm there would be no end to dissenters pressing for their various ideas of a perfect church, and so perpetuating schism. He admitted that various reforms were desirable in the Church of England, especially in the church courts to restore the puritan ideal of church discipline; but dissenters maintained their nonconformity only because of certain 'accidental appendices' and some 'circumstantials of worship' whereas the Church of England's schism with Rome rested on doctrinal issues—a very different matter" (Till in Oxford DNB).The work has considerable historical value, since Stillingfleet presents a very careful anatomy of the various phases of dissent, both in England and abroad. There are several interesting accounts of the early churches in North America and discussions of the debates between Roger Williams, John Cotton and Samuel Gorton.   view more...
£250.00
US$373.95*


(STUART, Charles, Baron Stuart de Rothesay). ~ [5 fine blue morocco bindings by Simier from the Rothesay collection.]

  1640-1650.
£3400.00
US$5085.70*



SULLY, Maximilien de Béthune, Duc de. ~ Memoires de sages et royales oeconomies d'estat, domestiques, politiques et militaires de Henry le Grand, l'exemplaire des roys, le prince des vertus, des armes et des loix, & le pere en effet de ses peuples François. Et des servitudes utiles obeissances convenables & administrations loyales de Maximilen de Bethune l'un des plus confidens; familiers & utiles soldats & serviteurs du grand Mars des François. Dediez à la France, à tous les bons Soldats & tous peuples François.

"A Amstelredam: chez Alethinosgraphe de Clearetimelee, & Graphexechon de Pistariste, à l'enseigne des trois vertus couronées d'Amaranthe," n.d.   [1638];
The Mémoires are the principal source for the political, economic, military and legal history of the reign of Henry IV ("le Grand"), compiled by the king's most able and most trusted minister. Henry's reign marked the rehabilitation of France's fortunes after the near-disintegration of the country during the Wars of Religion. Sully's collection represents a very immediate account of the period between 1570 and 1628, including episodes such as Henry's conversion to Catholicism (arguably a political expediency urged by Sully himself, who remained Protestant); the Edict of Nantes (which promised religious toleration for the Huguenots); negotiations with the English crown (both Elizabeth and James I); and war with Spain (in alliance with England). Sully's own contrubution to the state is amply recorded - he is remembered for his reorganisation of the country's finances and system of office-holding as well as for his engineering projects (the Place Royale and the Briare Canal linking Seine and Loire being the best known). The Mémoires are historiographically advanced and include both critical narrative and a large number of transcribed diplomatic material. They have, however, been criticized for partiality and for containing "many fictions, such as a mission undertaken by Sully to Queen Elizabeth in 1601, and the famous 'Grand Design,' a plan for a Christian republic [or a United States of Europe], which some historians have taken seriously" (Ency. Brit, 1911). The work was completed posthumously by a second volume (present here) under the editorship of J. Le Laboureur. The bibliography of this work has been contentious. For a long time, our edition with the coloured frontispieces was accepted as the first, published with a false imprint at the Chateau de Sully itself. It is now clear that there were actually as many as 3 issues bearing versions of these title pages: the exceptionally rare true first edition printed under Sully's eye (with a different collation to ours); our swiftly-produced contrefaçon of the same year, and one other pirate edition. Complete sets of any edition are rare.   view more...
£1400.00
US$2094.11*






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*




(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*







WALKER, William. ~ [A dictionarie of English and Latine idiomes wherein phrases of the English tongue answering in parallels each to the other are ranked under severall heads alphabetically set...] Idiomatologia Anglo-Latina, sive Dictionarium idiomaticum Anglo-Latinum: in quo phrases, tam Latinæ quam Anglicanæ linguæ sibi mutuò respondentes, sub certis quibusdam capitibus secundum alphabeti ordinem è regione collocantur. In usum tam peregrinorum, qui sermonem nostru Anglicanum, quàm nostratium, qui Latinum idioma callere student. Quarta editio. Cui acessit istiusmodi phrasium & idiomatum additio in utraque lingua ad minus trium millium.

London: E. Horton for T Sawbridg,  1685.
£900.00
US$1346.22*


 ~ 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*





(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*





VERGIL, Polydore. ~ Les livres de Polydores Vergile d'Urbin, des inventeurs de choses, traduicts de Latin en Francois, et de nouveau reveuz & corrigez.

Lyon: Benoist Rigaud,  1576.
£850.00
US$1271.43*







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* 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