Le Conservateur ou Bibliothèque choisie de littérature, de morale et…

4 vols, 12mo (154 × 80 mm), pp. viii, 333, [3]; [2], 359, [3]; [iii]-viii, 338; [2], 332, [8] (including approbation) but without the half-titles (which included imprints for the first two volumes). Printed partly on bluish paper, woodcut ornaments. Contemporary mottled calf, gilt panelled spines with red and green labels, mottled edges. Slightly rubbed but a very nice copy. Small early stamps ‘Mis. de la Roche’ to titles and one other leaf.

First edition, all published. Delandine’s short-lived and scarce literary magazine includes numerous translated excerpts from British authors and other articles of British interest, notably Chesterfield (his portraits of Marlborough and Bolingbroke), Thomas Parnell (’Health, an Eclogue’), a letter from actor James Quin, Thomas Hunter’s Observations on Tacitus, Thomas Chatterton, Johnson (two excerpts from The Rambler, plus a note on his Dictionary), Dick Whittington and his cat, an article on the origin of British newspapers, and Butler’s ‘A Huffing Courtier’.