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Sir Walter Scott here makes arrangements for a short sitting with sculptor Sir Francis Chantrey before lunching with Lady Shell[e]y. In 1820 Chantrey had produced his celebrated bust of Scott. A further marble version was made in 1828, with additional sittings by Scott, as alluded to in this letter. ‘The original bust in plaster was completed in 1820. It is now in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford University. According to Chantrey’s ledger, five marble replicas were made, the most famous of which is that at Abbotsford. Begun in 1820, the Abbotsford bust was not completed until 1821, when Scott gave Chantrey a number of further sittings in the course of two visits to London. The Abbotsford bust remained in Chantrey’s studio from 1821 until 1828, and all the engravings and medallions representing Chantrey’s bust would appear to derive from it. Chantrey offered the bust as a gift to Lady Scott while visiting Abbotsford in May 1825... A third marble version was made for Chantrey's own studio in 1828, for which Scott gave further sittings, and which shows minor changes in the configuration of the face. This version was purchased by Sir Robert Peel in 1838 and is now in a private collection’ (Oxford DNB).

Frances Lady Shelley was one of the principal English diarists of the George III period and a close (if not always sympathetic) acquaintance of the Scotts.

An anti-Napoleonic tract, describing the French victories in Italy under Napoleon in 1796, under the figure of the Roman conquest of Greece. Having published more than one such critiques, Barzoni had fled Venice in 1797. First published in 1797 under false imprint, there were numerous editions and issues of I Romani nella Grecia with ‘London’ imprints like this, probably all printed in Venice.

Appended to this copy, probably contemporaneously are four popular patriotic songs or verses of a type which would have circulated semi-clandestinely in manuscripts like these. One is entitledL ‘Alfieri all sua Patria’. This edition not in ESTC, which lists a 1797 edition with the F. Rivington and G. Robinson imprint, and several other editions 1797-9.

A diminutive Geneva psalter in green vellum. The French text is Bèze and Marot’s rhymed version first published in 1562 in which the 150 psalms were set to 124 melodies. Worldcat locates the Geneva copy only of this edition.

First edition of this important and elaborate production by Emily Faithfull’s Victoria Press, which was managed and operated by women. The press was founded following discussion by the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women who had explored favourable avenues for female employment: ‘One possibility considered was that of compositor, a skilled trade almost wholly confined to men, already effectively unionized and jealously guarded against both unskilled machine operators and any incursions by women. Bessie Parkes bought a small printing press, and she and Emily Faithfull employed a compositor, Austin Holyoake (brother of George Jacob Holyoake), to give instruction in composing. On the basis of this experience they concluded that composing could be a suitable occupation for women. To this end, on 25 March 1860, Emily Faithfull opened the Victoria Press at Great Coram Street, London. She invested her own capital in the press and had the financial backing of another committee member of the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women, G. W. Hastings.

The press employed at the outset some semi-experienced female compositors, who existed despite the trade restrictions practised by men, but the venture was to remain an irritant to many compositors and others in the printing trade. It was nevertheless a commercial success, although the women compositors only composed and proof-read, unlike later women printers working for the Women's Printing Society (founded in 1876 by Emma Paterson's Women's Protective and Provident League, with which Emily Faithfull was also associated), who also carried out both imposition and ‘making up’ (making up the type into pages and placing them in the iron frame or chase for printing). Initially Emily Faithfull both printed and published, one of her earliest works being The Victoria Regia (1861), edited by Adelaide Ann Procter. The work and the press attracted the approval of Queen Victoria, and in that same year Emily Faithfull was appointed by royal warrant 'Printer and Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty' (Oxford DNB).

A fine manuscript facsimile of the Ten Commandments (Exodus, 1-17), slightly reduced from the text of the Gutenberg (or 42-line, or ‘Mazarin’) Bible. It was made in 1926 by a Barrow-in-Furness engraver, antiquary and astronomer S.B. Gaythorpe. Formerly in the collections of James Dearden.

Leaf 60 from Koberger’s 1477 printing of the earliest theological encyclopaedia, first composed in the fourteenth century and printed several times in the fifteenth century. ISTC ir00008000.

An attractive illuminated leaf in gothic type. The text is a portion of the Office of the Dead from a Book of Hours and opens with the prayer or chant: ‘Ne recorderis peccata mea domine. Dum veneris iudicare saeculum per ignem’ (Remember not my sins, oh Lord. When thou shall come to judge the world by fire).
Ex libris James Dearden. Folio Society Collector’s Corner. Catalogue 7 (1962), item 135, illustrated (£3.10).

This attractive fragment includes the opening of the prayer to the Virgin ‘O intemerata’ (O Immaculate), commonly included (with the ‘Oscecro te’) in a medieval Book of Hours. Folio Society, Collectors Corner (n.d, ?1960) £2.

Ex libris James Dearden. Folio Society, Collectors Corner, catalogue 2 (1961), item 66 (£2.10).

The verso includes the first part of Psalm 42, ‘Quem admodum desiderat cervus ad fontes aquarum’ (Like as the hart desireth the water). Ex libris James Dearden. Folio Society Collector’s Corner, catalogue 11 (1962) item 190 (£4).

An attractive single leaf from a Book of Hours including, as an antiphon, the opening verses of Psalm 95, ‘Cantate Domino cantico novum; cantate Domino omnis terra’ (O sing unto the Lord a new song). Ex libris James Dearden. Folio Society Collector’s Corner, catalogue 9 (1962), item 173 (£3)

A particularly attractive and well-margined Italian decorated manuscript leaf. It is from a Benedictine Breviary sold at Sotheby's, 13 December 1965, lot 202, £180 to Folio Fine Art, described as 'northern Italian', but probably Naples.

A fine fragment from a typical median sized French thirteenth century Bible, with characteristic illumination in a good state of preservation. The text is from Saint Paul’s Epistles 1 Corinthians 15:44 to 2 Corinthians 3:4. Though in a typical Parisian style, the Bible’s origin may actually have been Avignon — it is mentioned in N. R. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, I, 1969, p, xii, n.2, for its punctus flexus punctuation, distinctive of the Carthusians, and it belonged to the Carthusians of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon. The Bible broken up by the dealer Louis Bondy, c.1961.

A handsome sixteenth-century Venetian manuscript of the statutes and foundation documents of the Constantinian Order of Saint George, a dynastic military order founded by in the sixteenth century for the defence of the Roman Catholic church. Founded by the Angeli, an Italian noble family of Albanian descent, the order claimed a largely fictitious lineage back to Constantine the Great and the Byzantine emperors. This manuscript bears the arms of the Angeli family and was probably made for them. It includes a brief pseudo-history of the order, an explanation and diagram of the gold cross adopted as their emblem, principles of descent, papal privileges and bulls (the earliest of 1293, the latest of 1578), together with 21 chapters of statutes and usages. The text had been printed by Bonelli of Venice in 1573.

According to a recent historian of the order: The Constantinian Order was established in Italy when Christian Europe was under assault in the east from the expansionist Ottoman sultanate and weakened in the north by the conflicts that followed the Protestant reformation. Its Angeli founders had fled their homeland on the Dalmatian coast at the end of the fifteenth century, following the collapse of the eastern empire and capture of Constantinople, to settle in the territories of the Venetian republic whose interests they had served during much of the previous century. The support the Angeli received from successive Popes was combined with a set of papal briefs and decrees of recognition that ultimately brought widespread acceptance of the Constantinian Order’s history. Its foundation commemorated the liberation of Christians from persecution across the Roman Empire from the north of Britain to the furthest reaches of Mesopotamia, marking the beginning of the decline of pagan beliefs across Europe. Although the Constantinian Order is an institution of the Roman church it nonetheless provides a traditional historic link to both the eastern and western ecclesiastical traditions’ (Guy Stair Sainty, The Constantinian Order of Saint George, 2018).

A diminutive compendium of personal devotions in the spirit of Thomas à Kempis comprising:

1-51: Esercizio sopra la passione di Gesû Cristo.
53-63: Meditazione sopra l’Amor di Dio.
65-77: Meditazione seconda...
79-89: Meditazione sopra amor proprio.
91-131: Breve instruzione per far con frutto l’Oratione mentale.
133-83: Meditatione sopra la Mansuetudine.
184-200: S[op]re Viaggi del’Anima Religiosa...
[1-38]: Essercizi Spirituali per Religiose professe..

First trade edition in a very presentable dust-jacket.

First edition, published October 13th 1927.

First published in 1886.

First published the previous year.

First edition. The Language of Botany was reprinted in 1796. Martyn was Cambridge professor of botany for sixty-three years and the first reader of botany following the foundation of the Cambridge botanical garden. Henrey, British botanical and horticultural Literature before 1800, 1026