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![(BALLOONING/AERONAUTICS). [A collection of 7 very rare single-sheet advertisements/broadsidesVictorian.]](/photos/377/main/377.jpg "(BALLOONING/AERONAUTICS). [A collection of 7 very rare single-sheet advertisements/broadsidesVictorian.]")
(GREEN, Charles.) Under the direct patronage of Her Majesty. Royal Gardens, Vauxhall. Grand Balloon Fete, by day, Friday, Aug. 25, 1837. The most Extraordinary Attraction! Ascent of the Royal Nassau Balloon! And of Mr. Green’s own Balloon at the same moment!... [London, n.p. 1837.] (350 × 106 mm), 2 wood-engraved illustrations, hand-coloured. Laid-down, lightly browned.
3. (HAMPTON, John.) Flora Gardens, Bayswater. Grand Parachute Descent! Monday, July 29, 1839, Mr Hampton The Unrivalled and Intrepid Aeronaut, will make his 18th ascent with his magnificent balloon, the “Albion”, and at an altitude of at least 10,000 feet from the earth, separate himself and apparatus from the balloon, and descend in his Royal Safety Parachute. [London:] Sayers, Marylebone Press, [1839.] (368 × 120 mm). Wood-engraved illustration, printed on yellow paper. Carefully laid to paper, a few minor stains, but otherwise very fresh
4. (GYPSON, Richard.) Grand Balloon Ascent! From the Yard of the Bedford Gas Company, Mr. Gypson will make his Sixteenth Ascent in his Magnificent Nocturnal Balloon, On Friday Afternoon Next, May the 1st, 1840... Bedford: Hill & Son, [1840.] (280 × 75 mm). Wood engraved illustration, printed on yellow paper. Traces of gum at corner, slightly browned, but very good.
5 (GYPSON, Richard.) Grand Balloon Ascent from the spacious premises of Mr. Smith’s Wharf Yard, East Gate, Sleaford. Mr Gypson [From the Royal Zoological Gardens, London.] Will make his 46th and last ascent this season on Thursday October 28th, 1841, at two for three precisely, with his Magnificent Silk Balloon... Sleaford [Lincs]: J. Creasy, [1841.] (285 × 114 mm). Wood engraved illustration. Browned.
6. (GREEN, Charles.) Cremorne Gardens, Chelsea... the first and only Benefit ever taken by Mr Green, the Aeronaut, will take place on Monday next Sept. 1st, 1845... mr green will ascend at half-past Five o’Clock, in the Great Nassau Balloon! [London:] S. G. Fairbrother, [1845]. (245 × 124 mm). Laid down.
7. (GREEN, Charles.) Royal Gardens Vauxhall... Tonight! Tuesday, Aug. 26th, Magnificent Fete and Gala In honour of the Birthday of H.R.H. Prince Albert... On which occasion will take place a Great Balloon Race by Celebrated Aeronauts... On Friday next, Aug. 29 First Night Balloon Ascent This Season, by the Veteran Green, In a splendidly Illuminated Balloon The Ascent to take place at 10 o’clock. [text also in French on verso]. [London:] S. G. Fairbrother, [n.d.]
This delightful group of seven handbills illustrates the Victorian craze for Ballooning and charts ascents by some aeronautical pioneers. The earliest advertises an audacious and ill-fated aeronautical experiment. The Eagle was “an airship designed by the Comte de Lennox in 1834 to create a direct communication link between the capitals of Europe. The first aerial ship of its kind, it was exhibited in the grounds of the Aeronautical Society in Kensington, London. It measured 160 feet long, 50 feet high and 40 feet wide, with a capacity of 98,700 cubic feet. The ship was cylindrical with conical ends and had eight paddle-shaped flaps, four on either side, which were intended to be worked backwards and forwards manually by a series of cords and chains. However, the airship proved too heavy to lift its own weight and was destroyed by onlookers after a failed ascent from the Champ de Mars, Paris, on 17th August 1834” (Science Museum, Science and Society Picture Library online). Though several prints and pamphlets accompanied the exhibition of the Eagle, we can find no other record of this handbill advertising admission to the “Dock Yard” of the Society opposite Kensington Gardens.
Three of the handbills here advertise ascents by Charles Green, the first person to make an ascent (in 1821) in a balloon filled with coal gas. In his long career he made numerous ascents and had several lucky escapes: one of these escapes being related in the 1845 “Benefit” sheet here. Another advertises (and depicts) a parachute descent by John Hampton in July 1839. The previous year he had become the first Englishman to make a succesful parachute jump, from around 9,000 feet. Two of the bills are provincial, from Bedord and Sleaford, and advertise balloon ascents by Richard Gypson, who toured Britain and the Europe with his balloon. All are rare. see full details...
An early work by Bentham, published in seven sections, of which the first is Bentham's proposed draught, and the following six chapters consist of his analysis and observations of the draught. "The news that the Constitutional Committee had submitted on 21 December 1789 to the National Assembly a draught plan for a new judicial system prompted Bentham to prepare and print in instalments his own Draught of a new plan for the organisation of the judicial establishment in France. Instalments, translated by Dumont, began to appear in the Courier de Province, for 22-23 May and continued to do so until May. At the beginning of April he addressed a letter to the President of the National Assembly, and one hundred copies of the parts so far printed in England were sent to Paris through the French minister in London, Francois Barthelemy (Correspondence, iv)" (Chuo, p. 59). see full details...
One of the central texts in the development of utilitarian tradition, Bentham's Fragment on Government is the first attempt to apply the principle of utility in a methodical and systematic manner to the theory of government, in the form of a detailed criticism of a section of Blackstone's famous work.
"Admirably written, free from the diffuseness and pronounced mannerisms of his later productions, the book is a model of controversial literature. Bentham's observations went far beyond the text upon which he proposed to comment. They were destructive of the theories in jurisprudence and political philosophy which were then prevalent, and 'were the first publication by which men at large were invited to break loose from the trammels of authority and ancestor wisdom on the field of law.' The 'Fragment on Government' was a new point of departure in jurisprudence." (John Macdonell, DNB, 1885.)
During the productive final years of Bentham's life, a number of his early works were republished, including this title which originally appeared anonymously in 1776. Though described on the title page as enlarged, the only significant addition was a long footnote to Ch. I, pp. 45-48. see full details...
One of the central texts in the development of utilitarian tradition, Bentham's Fragment on Government is the first attempt to apply the principle of utility in a methodical and systematic manner to the theory of government, in the form of a detailed criticism of a section of Blackstone's famous Commentaries.
"Admirably written, free from the diffuseness and pronounced mannerisms of his later productions, the book is a model of controversial literature. Bentham's observations went far beyond the text upon which he proposed to comment. They were destructive of the theories in jurisprudence and political philosophy which were then prevalent, and 'were the first publication by which men at large were invited to break loose from the trammels of authority and ancestor wisdom on the field of law.' The 'Fragment on Government' was a new point of departure in jurisprudence." (John Macdonell, DNB, 1885.)
During the productive final years of Bentham's life, a number of his early works were republished, including this title which originally appeared anonymously in 1776. Though described on the title page as enlarged, the only significant addition was a long footnote to Ch. I, pp. 45-48. see full details...
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 Europe
In 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. see full details...
![[BOEMUS, Johannes.] WATERMAN, William, translator.](/photos/446/main/446.jpg "[BOEMUS, Johannes.] WATERMAN, William, translator.")
The book is important as a summary of anthropological knowlege of races, traits and customs of Africa and Asia from the early years of the age of discovery.
A translation of Book 1 only by William Prat had appeared in 1554 (STC 3196.5, BL only) and text was reprinted in the 1812 edition of Hakluyt’s voyages. The dedication to Henry Fitzalan, 12th Earl of Arundel promises a translation of Book 3 (on Europe) but this never appeared.
Very little is known of the author. ‘Born in Aub in Franconia and writing between 1515 and 1520, Boemus was a contemporary of Copernicus and of Sir Thomas More; he was an elder member of the generation of Jean Bodin and Giovanni Botero; and if still living in the sixth decade of the sixteenth century, an old man when Bacon and Shakespeare were born’ (Hodgen). His work was evidently well-read in Europe to judge from the various early editions and translations. His descriptions of Africa, include Ethiopia, Egypt and Carthaginia and are based largely on ancient sources while the Asian sections are devoted to the Middle East and India.
At the end is printed a ‘treatise of Josephus conteyning the ordres, and Lawes of the Jewes commune wealthe’ a translation of book 4, chapter 8 of Antiquitates Judicae, the first appearance of part of thisJosephus’s text in English.
Provenance: foliation in an early hand. Several short quotations in Latin from Horace, Ovid and elsewhere in a neat late 16th-century hand, vertically down outer margins, presumably by the Francis Smith who signs one of them, including on:
(O6v) “I fire, i freese, I burne, i broyle. I starve i frett i fume / I live and die. i die and live, in langor I consume.” A direct quote from A Most lamentable and tragicall historie, containing the outrageous and horrible tyranny which a Spanish gentlewoman named Violenta executed upon her lover Didaco, beacuse he espouthed another being first betrothed to her (London, 1576, leaf D2r): adapted into verse by Thomas Achelley from William Painter’s translation of one of Bandello’s Novelles in The Palace of Pleasure. Achelley’s poem recorded in one copy only (STC 1256.4, Bodley, lacking leaf A4). Violenta became, probably via Painter, a speechless character (entering only once) in Shakespeare’s ‘All’s Well that ends Well.’
(T6v): “Dives dives non omni tempore Vives / Da tua, dum tua sunt, post mortem tunc tua sunt. ffranciscus Smyth.”
Later provenance: Henry Cunliffe, bookplate and his notes on first flyleaf; probably the Lancashire dialect lexicographer who collected Shakespearean sources and early books on the English language; bought from Boone of New Bond Street for £4 in 1859 [a letter from Boone concerning the incorrect catchword on T7v tipped in at end]; by descent to Rolf, 2nd Baron Cunliffe, sale, Sotheby’s 13 May 1946, lot 46, £38 to Maggs, Catalogue 817/334 (1953) £52/10. see full details...
Buchanan’s translation of the Psalms may fairly be considered one of the representative books of the sixteenth century, expressing, as it does, in consummate form, the conjunction of piety and learning which was the ideal of the best type of humanist’ (Cambridge History of English and American Literature).
Buchanan, though a Scotsman, travelled widely on the continent. The two plays, Jephthe and Baptistes, which also appear in our edition were composed at Bordeaux during a spell of teaching at the newly founded Collège de Guyenne (where Montaigne was among Buchanan’s pupils). The Paraphrasis was begun at Coimbra (Portugal) where Buchanan had been teaching at the time of the Inquisition. He had gone to teach there in 1547, only to find the university soon overrun with Jesuits who observed his every movement and confined him to a nearby monastery to reform his humanist tendency towards satire (and the eating of meat in Lent). The Paraphrasis was the product of his penance: an unmistakeable triumph of humanist piety and scholarship. The work was dedicated to Mary Queen of Scots (and the dedication is repeated in our Elizabethan edition) who appointed Buchanan tutor to her son, the future James VI. It was first printed by the Estiennes in 1566, but was also printed in England in 1580 and 1583. see full details...
![[CAREW, Bampfylde-Moore.]](/photos/342/main/342.jpg "[CAREW, Bampfylde-Moore.]")
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 also to his wife, Mrs. Goadby. see full details...
Presented in two divisions, the first covering Faversham and environs; the second, the region of East Kent in general. The first division opens with a gazetteer of plants (and molluscs and insects) to be found in different parts of Faversham in each of the months of the year: Thorn Creeek, Ewell, Bysing Wood, Sittingbourne Road, Newnham Road, Cades and Ashford Road (each with subdivisions into smaller roads, woods and fields). Cowell is described on the title-page as ‘Corresponding member, and local secretary, for Kent, of the Botanical Society of London.’ The Society was then in its infancy, with the first volume of its Proceedings (1839) advertised on the final two advert leave shere. A Floral Guide... is dedicated to Lady Harris of Belmont House.
William Ratcliffe was a second-generation Faversham printer and bookseller, working from 44-5 Court Street (now Lloyds bank) (see Richard Goulden, Faversham Book Trade 1730-1900, 1996, p. 32). see full details...
![[DOD, John and Robert CLEAVER].](/photos/768/main/768.jpg "[DOD, John and Robert CLEAVER].")
London: William Hall, for Thomas Man, 1612, pp. [viii], 191, [1], complete with first leaf, blank except for signature ‘A’ at foot, third edition, STC 6959;
[and:] — A plaine and familiar exposition of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth chapters of the Prouerbs of Salomon. London: R. B[radock]. for Roger Jackson..., 1609, pp.[iv], 1-45, 53, 52-54, 49, 48-49, 48, 55, 153, [3], complete with final blank, second edition, STC 6960;
[and:] — A plaine and familiar exposition of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seuenteenth chapters of the Prouerbs of Salomon. London: by Felix Kingston for Thomas Man, 1611, pp.[viii], 157, [3], complete with final blank, second edition, STC 6964;
[and:] DOD, John and Ronert CLEAVER. A plaine and familiar exposition: of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth chapters of the Prouerbs of Salomon ... London: [William Stansby and Thomas Creede] for Roger Jackson, 1611, pp.[xii], 170, [2], complete with initial and final blanks; second edition, STC 6966.
Five works bound together, 4to (190 × 138 mm), woodcut ornaments and initials. Some light browning throughout, two small wormholes affecting upper line in final two works, becoming a track towards the end. Contemporary limp vellum, spine lettered in manuscript ‘Dod on Ye Proverbs’, soiled, upper hinge broken. Early inscription ’Mrs Joane Saunders’ to head of first dedication, later bookplate (Willey Park) and inscription ‘Jessie Hope - left to J.A.N. April 1900’.
Dod and Cleaver’s Plaine and familiar expositions were a Puritan publishing phenomenon. They were written while the two preachers were under a ban imposed by the Bishop of Oxford after they refused to subscribe to Whitgift’s Three Articles and were an inspiration to the generation of Puritans in England and America. Each book was separately issued and they appear bound up in a variety of formations, the present collection being typical. They were later collected as A brief Explanation of the whole book … of Salomon (1615).
The dedication to Sir Anthony Cope of Hanwell (patron of Dod’s former living in Oxfordshire) explains the desire to stir up evangelical zeal. ‘We are now more willing to make some worke for the Presse, because we have no imployment in the pulpit. And who knoweth, but that others ... may be stirred up hereby, to publish some of their godly meditations; that as their faithful labours were formerly like pure fountaines, which did not only refresh their particular congregations: so now, by meanes of printing, they may be made like great and comfortable rivers, to water the whole Lands.’
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Keynes suggests that the work was first published in 1647, since although it is undated, it first appears in the Stationers' Register in the autumn of 1646. The second issue uses the unsold sheets of that first issue with a cancel title.
Donne frankly admits his fascination for the act of suicide in his Preface “...whensoever any affliction assailes me, mee thinks I have the keyes of my prison in mine owne hand, and no remedy presentes it selfe so soone to my heart, as mine own sword." He chose not to publish his meditations on the subject and only circulated the Biathanatos among friends in manuscript. He sent a copy to Sir Edward Herbert, and, in 1619, another to Sir Robert Karre, writing: "It was written by me many years since; and because it is upon a misinterpretable subject, I have always gone so near suppressing it, nor many eyes to read it: onely to some particular friends in both Universities, then when I writ it, I did communicate it: And I remember, I had this answer, That certainly, there was a false thread in it, but not easily found: Keep it, I pray, with the same jealousie; let any that your discretion admits to the sight of it, know the date of it; and that it is a Book written by Jack Donne, and not by D. Donne: Reserve it for me, if I live, and if I die, I only forbid it the Presse, and the Fire: publish it not, but burn it not; and between those, do what you will with it'”(cited by Keynes). It was published posthumously by John Donne the younger, and dedicated by Lord Herbert's sone Phillip. see full details...
![[EACHARD, John.]](/photos/18/main/18.jpg "[EACHARD, John.]")
“This work, which brims over with wit and humour, had a rapid sale, and passed through many editions. The author represents the contempt with which the clergy were generally regarded as being in great measure due to a wrong method of education or the poverty of some of the inferior clergy” (DNB).
The book, with its occasionally hilarious anecdotes of disasters in the pulpit, was widely discussed and criticised. It later formed the basis of Macaulay’s account of the English clergy around the time of the accession of James II in his History of England.
Eachard was Master of Catherine Hall, Cambridge and later Vice-Chancellor of the University. He was something of a learned wag and here forestalled the likely assumptions of the reader in a good-humoured preface: “I can very easily phansie, that many upon the very first sight of the Title, will presently imagin, that the Author does either want the great Tithes, lying under the pressure of some pitiful Vicaridge; or that he is much out of humour, and dissatisfied with the present condition of Affairs; or lastly, that he writes to no purpose at all, there having been an abundance of unprofitable Advisers in this kind.” see full details...
Joseph Edmondson was an artist of humble origins who had begun his career as a coach-painter, and became coach-painter to Queen Charlotte in 1763. “On 21 January 1764, thanks to the support of the new deputy earl marshal, Lord Suffolk, Edmondson was created Mowbray herald of arms extraordinary, although he continued his successful coach-painting business until his death. His brother officers, especially Stephen Martin Leake, Garter, regarded him as an ignorant and low ‘mechanic’, and only reluctantly did they now allow him, as an extraordinary herald and not a member of the college, access to their records and collections” (Ailes in Oxford DNB).
Precedency gives tables of precedency of British men and women and provides a list of “collar days” on which those entitled may wear their official “collars” indicating precedency. The book was reprinted in a second edition c. 1785. see full details...
The sermon takes as its text Revelation XVII, 5 “And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots, and Abominations of the Earth” and gives a detailed consideration of the supposed ceremonies of the masons. Three other editions/issues dated 1768 are known, one with a Robinson and Roberts imprint paginating [iv], 39, [1] (NY Historical Society only) and a stated “Second edition” with the same imprint and pagination (BL and Clark Library, UCLA only), together with a Dublin reprint. All three are recorded by ESTC in single copies only. The Sermon provoked a response from John Thompson, freemason, entitled Remarks on a sermon lately published; entitled, Masonry the way to hell. Being a defence of that antient and honourable order, against the Jesuitical sophistry and false calumny of the author (1768, BL only). see full details...
Gower is chiefly remembered as a friend of Geoffrey Chaucer and his Confessio Amantis is frequently cited as the origin of William Shakespeare’s play Pericles (who’s story is taken from book 8 of the Confessio) but he should be accepted in his own right as one of the great pioneers of English literature.
The plan of the Confessio was doubtless borrowed from the Roman de la Rose, and consists of a dialogue first between the poet, in the character of a lover, and Venus, and afterwards between the poet, in the character of a penitent, and Genius, whom Venus assigns to him as a confessor. In the conversation between the penitent and the confessor the seven deadly sins are discussed and illustrated from Gower’s encyclopaedic knowledge of Ovid, Josephus, Vincent de Beauvais, Statius, the Gesta Romanorum, the Bible, and other sources. In the eighth book, having described the duty of a king and prayed for England, the poet bids farewell to earthly love. The work is a profound meditation on human love and morality and in Gower’s own words in the Prologue it was “a boke for Englondes sake”.
The work survives in numerous early manuscripts (attesting to its immediate popularity) and was first printed by Caxton in 1474. Thomas Berthelet’s edition of 1532 is considered textually superior to Caxton. Pforzheimer notes that the “edition was printed from a manuscript, resembling MS. Bodley 294, but inferior in correctness, collated with Caxton’s edition from which several passages lacking in the manuscript were supplied. In the prefatory note ‘To the reader’ Berthelet included the alternative form of the introductory lines Prologue 24-92, also from Caxton’s edition, so that on the whole this edition is textually an improvement over the earlier one. It is also a good example of workmanlike printing much above the average English work of the period” (Pforzheimer). The third edition of 1554 is merely a paginary reprint of the present.
The early ownership inscription of William Sotheby is dated 1532. This copy is handsomely bound in the style of Mackinley for the Earl of Stafford, among the richest men in England at the opening of the nineteenth-century. The Earl was himself a latter-day member of the Gower family (he claimed descent in the male line from Sir Alan Gower of Stittenham, supposedly sheriff of York at the time of the conquest). Several antiquaries had previously suggested that the poet’s origins lay in the same place, so this would have been a fitting acquisition for the Earl. see full details...
“The most important book in the history of medicine. Harvey proved experimentally that in animals the blood is impelled in a circle by the beat of the heart, passing from arteries to veins through pores (i.e. the capillaries, seen by Malpighi with the microscope in 1660)” (G&M). It should also be regarded as “the first record of a complete biological investigation, giving a clear and accurate description of the methods employed to recognise the laws governing an important vital process, a knowledge of which had till then been befogged by mistaken conceptions…” (H.P. Bayon in Keynes).
The translation is from the Rotterdam edition and includes the additional commentaries by Zachariah Wood and James De Back. This edition also contains the first English translation of Exercitio anatomica de circulatione sanguinis (of which the first edition had appeared in Latin at Cambridge in 1649) again taken from the Rotterdam edition. This is an important text in its own right, providing a restatement of Harvey’s hypothesis concerning circulation supported by further experimental proof.
Harvey’s hypothesis, like almost all revolutionary hypotheses, was initially very unpopular and was widely refuted. Harvey himself admitted that his career was nearly destroyed by the publication of De Motu Cordis. However, it is interesting that Harvey was quickly vindicated and that the circulation of the blood became accepted as irrefutable medical fact within his own lifetime, albeit towards its end. This lifetime edition in English reflects that vindication. Keynes wrote of the text “It gives a vigorous if unpolished, rendering of Harvey’s book in contemporary language.”
This is an unusually tall copy. In most copies the headlines, and sometimes even the top lines of the text, are shaved. In this copy none of the headlines is shaved, and on some leaves the lower edge is uncut. This copy has 11 of the 13 misprints (to pagination and signatures) listed by Keynes that were corrected as the book passed through the press. In addition, F3 is mis-signed F5. It is complete with the first blank leaf. see full details...
Landon’s book seems to have been a recreation. He notes towards the end ‘The Drawing in this Book was began by James Landon the 30 May as may be seen by the Title Page 1790 and Finished the 13 of May 1791 being near 1 years from beginning to Ending.’
The sequence of comic figures include Dancing Dolly, Down Looking Dicky, Betsy Blossom, A Man in a Maze, The Duke of Limbs, Simon Swig Bottle, Oliver Upright and Frank Flower Finder. They resemble chap-book illustrations, but with a few exceptions (Mother Bunch and Darby & Joan) they seem to have sprung from Landon’s imagination or sense of humour. A sequence of natural curiosities includes ‘A large Golden Fish’, a ‘Lion like sea Monster’, ‘Barnet a Sea Fish’, ‘A Sea Fish with a head like a Bare’, ‘The Sea Feather’, ‘A Monster Sea Hogg’, ‘The Rhinocerous’ and ‘A Man with a head growing out of his belly’.
The two images of native Americans entitled ‘A Woman of the Ottigaumies’ and ‘An Ottigaumie Soldier’ are derived from a plate in Jonathan Carver’s Travels through the interior parts of North-America (1778, with several reprints before 1790) which shows the man and woman (with child) in reversed positions. The tribes of the Outagamie were members of the Meskwaki tribes of modern-day Wisconsin.
Landon’s book also includes a coloured octogram, personifications of Flora (‘flowers’), Pomona (‘fruit’) and Ceres (‘corn’), a sequence of flowers, a fine depiction of a British Man-o’-War, a sequence the arms of British towns, an illustrated table of Precedency, and concludes with several verses and conundrums. see full details...
Divided into three major sections: General, Classical and Juvenile, the library was evidently that of an educated and ordered household and comprises works from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries covering a wide variety of subjects, including travel, literature, biography, law, mathematics and algebra, bookkeeping, natural history, geography and religion. Among the several serial and collected works represented are The Family Library, Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopaedia, Scott’s Novels, The Family Classical Library and Pinnock’s Catechisms. The juvenile section is especially interesting as a record of educational titles of the Regency period and comprises over 200 titles.
The catalogue is anonymous, but has been studiously prepared, giving sizes and (sometimes) dates for each work. There are a few additional notes recording purchases, gifts and (in one case) sale of books. see full details...
![LOVEDAY, R[obert].](/photos/187/main/187.jpg "LOVEDAY, R[obert].")
The letters and poems of Robert Loveday were published posthumously by his brother Anthony in 1659 and subsequently reprinted several times. Loveday’s education at Peterhouse, Cambridge, was interrupted by the Civil War and he became a secretary to the Clinton family; in this capacity he travelled extensively throughout England, spending time at the Clintons' seat, Tattershall Castle, Lincolnshire, and at the Clares' residence, Thurland House, Nottinghamshire.
Loveday was an accomplished translator whose most notable work was a three-volume translation of La Calprenède's Cléopâtre but he is remembered mainly for his letters. By all accounts an unusually charming and attractive personality (even the running title here reads 'Loveday's Letters. The Perswasive Secretary'), Loveday's agreeable style may be illustrated by a touching display of fraternal love which he pays his brother: ‘am deep in your debt for abundance of loving expressions, and want words to tell you how tenderly I entertained them; the task is too big to let you know how dear you are to me; do me but the Courtesie to fancy an affection, pure, unbiassed, unreserved, that scorns limits, loaths change, and is onely less excellent than that which makes Angels clap their wings’.
Loveday died of tuberculosis in his mid thirties and several of the letters describe its undiagnosed progress. He had apparently been a patient of Sir Thomas Browne and it has been argued that Browne’s Letter to a Friend (published posthumously, 1690) was addressed to Loveday (‘The Occasion and Date of Sir Thomas Browne's "A Letter to a Friend"’, Frank Livingstone Huntley, Modern Philology, 48, No. 3, Feb., 1951.) see full details...
Reymes saw active service in the Royalist armies, and was appointed to various lucrative offices on the Restoration. He was also a noted diarist and was nominated a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1667 by his friend John Evelyn.
‘Reymes seems to have been built for friendship: among those in this category he numbered Pepys, Evelyn, Thomas, Lord Clifford, Sir Charles Cotterell, and Sir William Coventry. Despite a passionate temper, he seems to have earned the respect of nearly all who came into contact with him. Contemporaries valued him for his loyalty, honesty, probity, and wry good humour. He was tolerant of the full spectrum of Restoration belief, but died a staunch Anglican. He was also highly cultivated, skilled in music as a youth, an avid theatre-goer and gardener’ (Bucholz, ODNB).
The text ofUtopia here is a reprint of the 1629 Amsterdam edition, edited by Pierre Gillis. see full details...
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.” see full details...
A collection of treatises on the Quakers, each with separate title page and pagination; the first is signed separately, the second and third continuously. “The three treatises are sometimes found in separate issues. When collected, a list of books to be sold by Benjamin Ferriss, in Wilmington, pp. [4], is generally found added.”(Evans). The publication of works defining and defending the Quaker faith, while distancing it from more extreme elements at its fringes, was central to seventeenth-century efforts to bring Quakerism into the mainstream of religious life. Penn and Barclay both played pivotal roles, publishing numerous important works, in addition to their notable diplomatic efforts. Barclay’s The Anarchy of the Ranters was first published in 1676, Penn’s Brief Account followed in 1694 and Pike’s Epistle appeared in 1726. All three titles were republished a number of times over the following century, including an edition of Barclay's The Anarchy of the Ranters with Pike’s Epistle, published in Philadelphia by B. Franklin and D. Hall in 1757. see full details...
407-430 of volume 4 of The Pamphleteer (1813). This is an important speech advocating the inclusion of stipulations in the peace treaty with Napoleon that the French should abandon the slave trade. Romilly, a lawyer of French extraction, maintained a broadly Whig outlook throughout his career, and had been a vocal opponent of slavery since 1787, when he joined the committee against slavery, making friends with Wilberforce and Bentham. A major argument levelled against abolition by the British in 1807 was that other nations would continue the trade regardless. Romilly, whose interests were whole-heartedly European was one of the most important forces in British politics for a wider movement towards abolition, recognising that slavery would only be abolished with European concensus. His contention in this speech was that the treaty was far to weak on the subject of slavery, stipulating as it did that the French abandon slavery in its colonies within 5 years. For Romilly, this was 5 years too many, especially since France showed every intention of breaking that deadline. see full details...
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. see full details...
1731). “The tragedy, which dramatizes the struggle of George Castriot to defend Albania from Turkish conquest, takes as its source the 1721 English translation of Scanderbeg the Great by Anne de La Roche-Guilhem. In the light of the patriot whig opposition to Walpole, Whincop’s dramatic portrait of the Albanian hero whose ‘conqu’ring sword / Oppos’d the torrent of the tyrant’s power’ (Scanderbeg, 16) may well have been intended as a propaganda piece. However, Whincop’s play was never performed...” (Brayne in Oxford DNB).
It also contains a “Compleat list of all the English dramatic poets, and of all the plays ever printed” [pp. 87-320] probably compiled by John Mottley, which includes Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Marlowe, Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Otway, Waller, Cibber, Addison, Steele, and Garrick. “The Compleat List of All the English Dramatic Poets of 1747, appended to Thomas Whincop’s play Scanderbeg, appears to be by Mottley and is therefore his last known work: in the spirit of a reckoning up, he claims his portions of various collaborations and paternity of theretofore unacknowledged works; the entry on himself he made his own memorial” (J. M. Rigg, rev. Yvonne Noble, Oxford DNB). The list is illustrated with attractive portraits. see full details...
It is “the first text on mechanics available in the English language. It is divided into two parts “Archimedes or Mechanical Powers” and “Daedalus or Mechanical Motions”- the latter part describing various machines, including strange devices and possibilities, such as a land vehicle powered by wind, submarines, flying automata, clocks, magnetic perpetuum mobile, etc. His sources were Guidobaldo’s Mechanicorum liber and Mersenne’s Cogitata physico-mathematica... One may see Wilkins’ work as a popular version of Mersenne’s work” (Biblioteca Mechanica). Wilkins was a leading figure in the English scientific renaissance, being, at various times influential at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and in the Royal Society (of which he was president from 1660-1661). He is known also for his conjectures on extra-terrestrial life (The discovery of a world in the moone, 1638).
Both the first and second editions bear the date 1648. see full details...
Willughby (1635-1720), author of some of the most important contributions in natural history before those of Linnaeus, toured the Continent extensively with John Ray, collecting material for his research and observing specimens to be reproduced in his drawings. He died before publishing his studies on fish. The large editorial work was undertaken by Ray, the renowned naturalist who had carried out extensive experimental work in embryology and plant physiology, a member of the Royal Society of London since 1667. Ray brought his taxonomy system to bear on Willughby's descriptions. Although broadly based on Aristotle's classification, it relied on anatomical and functional features, and was the first system based on the notion of species in the distinction of diverse animals and plants.
The exceptional collection of plates is known in two editorial states, one with engravings on both recto and verso of each leaf, the second engraved on recto only. This copy has 'state b' plates, and the title-page which is sometimes bound before the plates is here bound at the beginning. see full details...
![WOODWARD, [George Murgatroyd].](/photos/596/main/596.jpg "WOODWARD, [George Murgatroyd].")
Like his drinking-partner Thomas Rowlandson, Woodward absorbed high and low culture omnivorously and paid keen attention to contemporary politics.
A Political Fair is ‘a fantastic survey of the international situation’ in 1807 and is considered one of Woodward’s finest images, the print catalogue of the British Museum devoting two full pages to its complex allegories. At the heart of the fair is a large booth (‘The Best-Booth in the Fair’) representing Great Britain holding aloft on its platform images of Britannia, John Bull, together with an Irishman, Scotsman and Welsh harpist gathered convivially around a punchbowl, while a waiter sweeps into the chamber below with a vast joint of roast beef on his platter. All this was typical of Woodward’s patriotism and was intended to portray the essential unity of the nation amidst the host of clamouring figures in the neighbouring booths representing the other nations. Napoleon, in tricorn and feathers, rebuffs a disgruntled Dutchman complaining about his King with the words ‘I never change Mynheer after the goods are taken out of the Shop’. High up on the right, the American booth displays a placard advertising ‘Much ado about Nothing with the Deserter’, a reference to the friction between Britain and the United States over recent defections from British to American ships and the ban on armed British ships in American ports. The Danish booth on the left advertises ‘The English Fleet and The Devil to Pay’ in reference to the hideous bombardment of Copenhagen by the British fleet in September that year.
Musical and theatrical references abound, with many of the placards punning on the titles of plays and musical performances then showing in London: Much ado about nothing, All’s well that ends well (Shakespeare), The Padlock (Bickerstaffe), The Deserter (Dibdin), The Double Dealer (on the Russian booth, by Congreve) and The English Fleet (Dibdin again). see full details...
![[CHOUDARD]-DESFORGES, [Pierre Jean Baptiste].](/photos/291/main/291.jpg "[CHOUDARD]-DESFORGES, [Pierre Jean Baptiste].")
![COWELL, M[atthew]. H[enry].](/photos/424/main/424.jpg "COWELL, M[atthew]. H[enry].")
![[DALRYMPLE, David, Sir.]](/photos/111/main/111.jpg "[DALRYMPLE, David, Sir.]")
![[DAVENANT, Charles.]](/photos/62/main/62.jpg "[DAVENANT, Charles.]")
![DOYLE, A[rthur]. Conan.](/photos/312/main/312.jpg "DOYLE, A[rthur]. Conan.")
![DOYLE, A[rthur]. Conan.](/photos/314/main/314.jpg "DOYLE, A[rthur]. Conan.")
![[DRAKE, James.]](/photos/403/main/403.jpg "[DRAKE, James.]")
![DU MOULIN, Pierre [or Peter].](/photos/767/main/767.jpg "DU MOULIN, Pierre [or Peter].")
![[FIELDING, Sarah, attributed to.] Mr. de la PLACE.](/photos/295/main/295.jpg "[FIELDING, Sarah, attributed to.] Mr. de la PLACE.")
![[GRANT, Anne.]](/photos/7/main/7.jpg "[GRANT, Anne.]")
![(LONDON). MOGG, E[dward].](/photos/166/main/166.jpg "(LONDON). MOGG, E[dward].")
![(MALTHUS.) [WHATELY, Richard, later Archbishop of Dublin.]](/photos/54/main/54.jpg "(MALTHUS.) [WHATELY, Richard, later Archbishop of Dublin.]")
![MANDER, Samuel S[mall].](/photos/395/main/395.jpg "MANDER, Samuel S[mall].")
![[PEACOCK, Thomas Love.]](/photos/192/main/192.jpg "[PEACOCK, Thomas Love.]")
![PEEBLES, J[ames]. M[artin].](/photos/399/main/399.jpg "PEEBLES, J[ames]. M[artin].")
![(SCOTLAND.) [CROKER, John].](/photos/132/main/132.jpg "(SCOTLAND.) [CROKER, John].")
![[SMITH, Horatio.]](/photos/318/main/318.jpg "[SMITH, Horatio.]")
![STEVENSON, R[obert] L[ouis].](/photos/354/main/354.jpg "STEVENSON, R[obert] L[ouis].")
![[TUFNELL, Edward Carlton.]](/photos/70/main/70.jpg "[TUFNELL, Edward Carlton.]")
