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  • The Flowers of Shakspeare. by GIRAUD, Jane Elizabeth. William SHAKESPEARE. GIRAUD, Jane Elizabeth. William SHAKESPEARE. ~ The Flowers of Shakspeare. 1845.
    An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

    Samphire illustrating ‘King Lear’, Act IV, Scene 6:

    ‘How dizzy ‘tis, to cast… (more)

    An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

    Samphire illustrating ‘King Lear’, Act IV, Scene 6:

    ‘How dizzy ‘tis, to cast one’s eyes so low!
    The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
    Show scarce so gross as beetles: half way down
    Hangs one that gathers samphire; dreadful trade!’

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  • The Flowers of Shakspeare. by GIRAUD, Jane Elizabeth. William SHAKESPEARE. GIRAUD, Jane Elizabeth. William SHAKESPEARE. ~ The Flowers of Shakspeare. 1845.
    An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

    Red and white roses illustrating Henry VI, Part I, Act II, scene 4, Warwick’s… (more)

    An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

    Red and white roses illustrating Henry VI, Part I, Act II, scene 4, Warwick’s speech:

    ‘This brawl today,
    Grown to this faction in the Temple garden,
    Shall send, between the red rose and the white,
    A thousand souls to death and deadly night’.

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  • The Flowers of Shakspeare. by GIRAUD, Jane Elizabeth. William SHAKESPEARE. GIRAUD, Jane Elizabeth. William SHAKESPEARE. ~ The Flowers of Shakspeare. 1845.
    An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

    Hawthorn and bramble illustrating ‘As you like it’, Act III, scene 1, Rosalind’s… (more)

    An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

    Hawthorn and bramble illustrating ‘As you like it’, Act III, scene 1, Rosalind’s speech:

    ‘There is a man haunts the forest, that abuses our young plants with carving Rosalind on their barks; hangs odes upon hawthorns and elegies on brambles, all, forsooth, deifying the name of Rosalind’.

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  • The Flowers of Shakspeare. by GIRAUD, Jane Elizabeth. William SHAKESPEARE. GIRAUD, Jane Elizabeth. William SHAKESPEARE. ~ The Flowers of Shakspeare. 1845.
    An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

    Briars, furze, gorse and blackthorn illustrating ‘The Tempest’, Act IV, scene 1, Ariel’s speech:… (more)

    An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

    Briars, furze, gorse and blackthorn illustrating ‘The Tempest’, Act IV, scene 1, Ariel’s speech:

    ‘So I charm’d their ears
    That, calf-like, they my lowing followed through
    Tooth’d briers, sharp Furzes, pricking Gorse, and Thorns.’

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  • The Flowers of Shakspeare. by GIRAUD, Jane Elizabeth. William SHAKESPEARE. GIRAUD, Jane Elizabeth. William SHAKESPEARE. ~ The Flowers of Shakspeare. 1845.
    An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

    Wild pansy (’Love -in-idleness’) illustrating ‘Midsummer Nights Dream’, Act II, Scene 2, as… (more)

    An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

    Wild pansy (’Love -in-idleness’) illustrating ‘Midsummer Nights Dream’, Act II, Scene 2, as the basis of the elixir which makes Titania, Oberon’s queen, fall in love with Bottom the ass.

    ‘Yet mark’d I where the bolt of Cupid fell:
    It fell upon a little western flower,
    Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound,
    And maidens call it love-in-idleness’.

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  • The Flowers of Shakspeare. by GIRAUD, Jane Elizabeth. William SHAKESPEARE. GIRAUD, Jane Elizabeth. William SHAKESPEARE. ~ The Flowers of Shakspeare. 1845.
    An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

    Oak leaves, acorns and rosehips illustrating ‘Timon of Athens’, Act IV, scene 3:

    ‘Why should… (more)

    An original hand-coloured lithograph from Jane Elizabeth Giraud’s Flowers of Shakspeare (1845).

    Oak leaves, acorns and rosehips illustrating ‘Timon of Athens’, Act IV, scene 3:

    ‘Why should you want? Behold, the earth hath roots;
    Within this mile break forth a hundred springs;
    The oaks bear mast, the briers scarlet hips;
    The bounteous housewife, nature, on each bush
    Lays her full mess before you’.

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  • Leonora. Translated from the German of Gottfried Augustus Bürgher, by W. R. Spencer, Esq. With designs by the Right Honourable Lady Diana Beauclerc. by [BEAUCLERK, Lady Diana, illustrator]. BÜRGER, Gottfried August. [BEAUCLERK, Lady Diana, illustrator]. BÜRGER, Gottfried August. ~ Leonora. Translated from the German of Gottfried Augustus Bürgher, by W. R. Spencer, Esq. With designs by the Right Honourable Lady Diana Beauclerc. London: Printed by T. Bensley; for J. Edwards, and E. an S. Harding, 1796.
    First edition of this translation and with the striking large engraved plates by Lady Diana Beauclerk. The artist was the eldest daughter of Charles Spencer,… (more)

    First edition of this translation and with the striking large engraved plates by Lady Diana Beauclerk. The artist was the eldest daughter of Charles Spencer, third duke of Marlborough. ‘Lady Di, as she was familiarly known, grew up at Langley Park, Buckinghamshire... There she enjoyed a happy upbringing, her taste for drawing developing early under the influence of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ (Oxford DNB). Her second marriage to Topham Beauclerk brought her into the orbit of Edward Gibbon, David Garrick, Charles Fox, Edmund Burke, and others. Her work — often in the gothic taste — was admired by Horace Walpole who commissioned seven large panels in black wash illustrating his tragedy, The Mysterious Mother, which he hung in a special hexagonal closet at Strawberry Hill (six of them are now at the Lewis Walpole Library, Farmington, CT). She also produced designs for Josiah Wedgwood.

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  • Olivier Twist … roman anglaise traduit avec l’autorisation de l’auteur … by DICKENS, Charles. DICKENS, Charles. ~ Olivier Twist … roman anglaise traduit avec l’autorisation de l’auteur … Paris: [Charles Lahure for] Librairie de L. Hachette et c[ompagn]ie, 1858.
    First authorised edition in French, the translation by Alfred Gérardin. It contains a bilingual address by Dickens giving his approbation to the translation as part… (more)

    First authorised edition in French, the translation by Alfred Gérardin. It contains a bilingual address by Dickens giving his approbation to the translation as part of a Works series projected by Hachette, concluding: ‘This is the only edition of my writings that has my sanction. I humbly and respectfully, but with full confidence, recommend it to my French readers. Charles Dickens. Tavistock-House, London, January 17th, 1857’. It is the translation in which Oliver Twist was read by French readers into the twentieth century, though the identity of Alfred Gérardin remains obscure.

    Earlier unauthorised editions had appeared in 1841 (Olivier Twist, ou l’Orphelin du depot de medicité, published by Barba) and in 1850 (Les Voleurs de Londres by Bedollière). The present Gérardin translation was issued a volume of Hachette’s of Bibliothèque des meilleurs romans étrangers in 1860 (and Monod is incorrect to state that it was first issued in 1864). cf. Sylvère Monods, ‘Les premiers traducteurs français de Dickens’, Romantisme, 1999, 29, 106, pp. 120-1. BL only in Jisc/Copac. WorldCat lists US copies at Morgan (Gordon Ray’s copy), San Diego, Chapel Hill, New Jersey State. �

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  • Le Conservateur de la santé des défenseurs de la patrie, ou Description abrégée des maladies qui règnent dans les pays chauds, sur les vaisseaux et dans les armées, avec la méthode de les prévenir et de les guérir; par le docteur Rowley, médecin des armées britanniques, traduit de l’anglais par J. P. Casimir Marcassus-Puymaurin, citoyen de Toulouse. Pour l’utilité de ses concitoyens. by ROWLEY, William. ROWLEY, William. ~ Le Conservateur de la santé des défenseurs de la patrie, ou Description abrégée des maladies qui règnent dans les pays chauds, sur les vaisseaux et dans les armées, avec la méthode de les prévenir et de les guérir; par le docteur Rowley, médecin des armées britanniques, traduit de l’anglais par J. P. Casimir Marcassus-Puymaurin, citoyen de Toulouse. Pour l’utilité de ses concitoyens. Toulouse: Noel-Étienne Sens, ‘l’an II de la République française’, 1792-3.
    FIRST EDITION IN FRENCH, translated (with substantial additions) from Rowley’s Medical Advice for the Army and Navy in the present American Expedition (London, 1776). The… (more)

    FIRST EDITION IN FRENCH, translated (with substantial additions) from Rowley’s Medical Advice for the Army and Navy in the present American Expedition (London, 1776). The translator, Casimir Marcassus-Puymaurin of Toulouse, explains in a preface that he was inspired to publish by the success of that book in England but also because the similarity of the climate of Georgia and Carolina considered by the army surgeon Rowley and the climate of summer in the south of France. Worldcat lists the University of Toulouse copy only.

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  • L’Entrée de l’empereur Sigismond a Mantoue; gravé en vingt cinq feuillets, d’après une longue frise exécutée en stuc dans le palais du T. de la même ville, sur un dessin de Jules Romain... by STELLA-BOUZONNET, Antoinette, engraver. STELLA-BOUZONNET, Antoinette, engraver. ~ L’Entrée de l’empereur Sigismond a Mantoue; gravé en vingt cinq feuillets, d’après une longue frise exécutée en stuc dans le palais du T. de la même ville, sur un dessin de Jules Romain... ‘A Paris au Galleries du Louvre... 1675 et chez Chereau et Joubert rue des Mathurins aux deux piliers dor’. [1787 or soon after].
    A RARE COLLECTION PRINTED FROM THE ORIGINAL PLATES ENGRAVED BY A PRODIGIOUSLY TALENTED FEMALE ENGRAVER. ANTOINETTE [OR ANTONIA] STELLA-BAUZONNET (1641-1676) ‘was the youngest daughter of… (more)

    A RARE COLLECTION PRINTED FROM THE ORIGINAL PLATES ENGRAVED BY A PRODIGIOUSLY TALENTED FEMALE ENGRAVER. ANTOINETTE [OR ANTONIA] STELLA-BAUZONNET (1641-1676) ‘was the youngest daughter of a successful French goldsmith. Despite the restrictions placed on women in art academies at the time, her family’s prominent social status allowed her and her sisters, Françoise and Claudine, to receive private training. Her uncle Jaques Stella, a painter and close friend of Nicolas Poussin, assisted his nieces and nephew in their artwork, inviting them to live in his prestigious lodgings at the Louvre. As the youngest of the children, Antoinette was additionally trained by her older siblings. The family frequently collaborated in painting, engraving, and publishing prints. Remembered for her masterfully executed aquatints and engravings, Stella suffered a tragic fall and died in Paris at the age of 35. One of Stella’s most notable works, The Entrance of the Emperor Sigismond into Mantua, 1675, consists of 33 relief-style engravings on paper depicting crowds of men, women, children, and horses traveling alongside the emperor’ (National Museum of Women in the Arts website).

    Stella-Bouzonnet’s plates were prepared after drawings by her father Antoine Stella at Mantua. They were printed first in 1675 and were later purchased and reprinted by Joubert, with Chereau, in 1787 (and probably for some time after). In this copy their imprint line giving the date of the reprint has been erased. Each of the plates has been closely cut and mounted in a large album c. 1800. It is of a type (and condition) suggesting use as an artist’s model book.

    Both the 1675 and 1787 editions are rare.

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  • Autograph letter, signed, from Elizabeth Sedgwick of Lenox (Massachusetts) to the Reverend William Henry Furness of Philadelphia. by (BUTLER, Frances Anne, or Fanny KEMBLE). (BUTLER, Frances Anne, or Fanny KEMBLE). ~ Autograph letter, signed, from Elizabeth Sedgwick of Lenox (Massachusetts) to the Reverend William Henry Furness of Philadelphia. Lenox (Mass.), 3 December, 1843.
    An unpublished letter from Elizabeth Sedgwick imploring help for the English actor and abolitionist Fanny Kemble (Mrs. Butler) from William Furness of Philadelphia. Kemble was… (more)

    An unpublished letter from Elizabeth Sedgwick imploring help for the English actor and abolitionist Fanny Kemble (Mrs. Butler) from William Furness of Philadelphia. Kemble was then resident in Philadelphia, as her marriage to the notorious philanderer and Georgia slave-owner, Pierce Butler was dissolving and Sedgwick here explains Kemble’s parlous situation and her abuse at Butler’s hands. In just over 1000 words Sedgwick mentions: Kemble’s abortive plan to publish her letters about her husband’s plantations, recounts news of Pierce Butler’s serial infidelities, of ‘the brutal manner in which for one year he attempted to crush her spirit’, her attempts at reconciliation for the sake of her children, her desire to not take anything from Butler by way of support and the instigation of the legal proceedings which would eventually lead to the couple’s divorce.
    The writer, Elizabeth Sedgwick (1801-1864) of Lenox, was Kemble’s closest confidante, to whom Kemble addressed her famous letters (referred to here) later published as the Journal of a Residence on a Georgia Plantation (1863). The recipient of the letter was William Furness (1802-1896): a Transcendentalist, a prominent abolitionist and a lifelong friend of Emerson. Born in Boston in 1802, Furness graduated from Harvard Divinity School in 1823, before becoming minister of the First Unitarian Church in Philadelphia at the age of 22 in 1825. He was still at Philadelphia when the desperate Fanny Kemble came to the city with her family after a disastrous visit to England in which it became apparent that her marriage to Butler was over. ‘From the time of their return to their country until her arrangement was made since I left Phil[adelphi]a, he had never furnished her with a single cent … she had not a farthing in the world’.
    ‘In 1838 Fanny with husband and children went to Georgia to spend the winter on their plantations. From apparently knowing nothing of slavery, she was thrown into the thick of the problem. Butler was moderately considerate to his slaves, but nothing could disguise the horrors of a system in which one man lived by owning others, treating them precisely as he fancied in order to get the best investment out of them. Worst of all, Fanny recognized that the considerable wealth the Butlers enjoyed, and to which she owed every mouthful she ate, came from the hated system. As it turned out, she spent less than four months on the plantations, but that was enough to stoke her moral indignation over the atrocities she saw. Once more, as she had done on first going to America, she kept a journal of her experiences, which in 1863 finally saw print as Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838–1839. It is a small masterpiece of generous outrage, arguing from the amply and sympathetically documented details of what she had seen, to generalized indignation that such treatment could be tacitly encouraged by part of a civilized nation. Although it was deliberately not published in the American south, copies soon found their way there and scarcely increased admiration for the meddling of an outsider who expressed herself on what was regarded as an indigenous issue’ (Oxford DNB).

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  • La petite Bibliothèque de la jeunesse. by (MINIATURE BOOKS). (MINIATURE BOOKS). ~ La petite Bibliothèque de la jeunesse. Paris: [Pinard for] Marcilly, [1836].
    A charming miniature juvenile library, complete with its original glass fronted case.
    Cotsen A-50 (wanting the glass front); Bondy, p. 77; Welsh, 2012, 2788, 5569,… (more)

    A charming miniature juvenile library, complete with its original glass fronted case.
    Cotsen A-50 (wanting the glass front); Bondy, p. 77; Welsh, 2012, 2788, 5569, 6481, 3312 and 5558. In the US, Worldcat lists the Wightman copy at the Morgan Library, the Cotsen copy at Princeton, the Adomeit copy at Indiana together with copies at University of Colorado and Oak Spring.

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  • Fleurs poétiques dédiées a S.A.R. Madame, duchesse de Berry … orné de seize gravures de fleurs coloriés. by DENNE-BARON, P[ierre-Jacques-René]. DENNE-BARON, P[ierre-Jacques-René]. ~ Fleurs poétiques dédiées a S.A.R. Madame, duchesse de Berry … orné de seize gravures de fleurs coloriés. Paris: [Lachevardiere fils for] Librairie d’Alexis Eymery, 1825.
    First edition of this delightful collection of floral poetry illustrated with unusual colour printed plates, each of two or three tints probably applied to the… (more)

    First edition of this delightful collection of floral poetry illustrated with unusual colour printed plates, each of two or three tints probably applied to the plate simultaneously. They are described by the online catalogue of the Bibliothèque nationale as lithographs, but they appear to be a kind of stipple engraving. A couple are marked as being after drawings by Poitreau, one of the most prominent botanical artists of the era (alongside Redouté). The work is dedicated to the young salon host, collector and bibliophile, the duchesse de Berry (1798-1870).
    The plates comprise: Le lis, la rose, la violette, la fleur d’oranger, la scabieuse, le bleuet, l’immortelle, la perce-neige, le soleil, les marguerites, le laurier rose, l’hortensia, le souci, l’astérie, le pavot et le narcisse and le lilas.

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  • Journey from Virginia to Salem Massachusetts 1799. by FAIRFAX, Thomas. FAIRFAX, Thomas. ~ Journey from Virginia to Salem Massachusetts 1799. London: [Lund Humphries] Printed for Private Circulation, 1936.
    A privately-printed transcript of a journal kept by Thomas Fairfax, later 9th Lord Fairfax of Cameron (1762-1846). In 1802, he succeeded his father to the… (more)

    A privately-printed transcript of a journal kept by Thomas Fairfax, later 9th Lord Fairfax of Cameron (1762-1846). In 1802, he succeeded his father to the title of Lord Fairfax of Cameron after his father’s death. He lived the life of a country squire overseeing his 40,000 acres in Virginia and lived at Belvoir, Ash Grove, and Vaucluse. He was 37 when he made the journey written up in a small notebook still in the possession of the Fairfax family in England. He travelled from Fairfield (Va) by land and water, taking ship from Norfolk to Newport and then continuing by coach making brief descriptions of Providence, Boston, Norwich, New London, New Haven, Fairfield and so on.

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  • Theodore Sedwick. by [SAINT-MÉMIN, Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de. [SAINT-MÉMIN, Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de. ~ Theodore Sedwick. 1801.
    A RARE ‘PHYSIONOTRACE’ PORTRAIT OF THEODORE SEDGWICK (1746–1813), the American attorney, politician, and jurist who served in elected state government and as a delegate to… (more)

    A RARE ‘PHYSIONOTRACE’ PORTRAIT OF THEODORE SEDGWICK (1746–1813), the American attorney, politician, and jurist who served in elected state government and as a delegate to the Continental Congress, a U.S. representative, and a senator from Massachusetts. He served as President pro tempore of the United States Senate from June to December 1798. He also served as the fourth speaker of the United States House of Representatives. He was appointed to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 1802 and served there for the rest of his life. He died at Boston and he is buried at Stockbridge. A portrait by Gilbert Stuart of c. 1808 is at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

    Sedgwick studied theology and law at Yale College and though he did not graduate, he continued in his study under attorney Mark Hopkins of Great Barrington. He played a significant role in the abolitionist movement. As a relatively young lawyer, Sedgwick and Tapping Reeve had pleaded the case of Brom and Bett vs. Ashley (1781), an early ‘freedom suit’, in county court for the slaves Elizabeth Freeman (known as Bett) and Brom. Bett (also known as MumBet)was a black slave who had fled from her master, Colonel John Ashley of Sheffield, Massachusetts, because of cruel treatment by his wife. Brom joined her in suing for freedom from the Ashleys. The attorneys challenged their enslavement under the new state constitution of 1780, which held that ‘all men are born free and equal.’ The jury agreed and ruled that Bett and Brom were free. The decision was upheld on appeal by the state Supreme Court. She was the first enslaved African American to file and win a freedom suit in Massachusetts. She marked her freedom by taking the name of Elizabeth Freeman, and chose to work for wages at the Sedgwick household, where she helped rear their several children. She worked there for much of the rest of her life, buying a separate house for her and her daughter after the Sedgwick children were grown. On her death the Sedgwicks buried her at Stockbridge Cemetery in the family plot.

    Before the advent of photography the physionotrace was ‘the first system invented to produce multiple copies of a portrait, invented in 1786 by Gilles-Louis Chrétien (1774–1811). In his apparatus a profile cast by a lamp onto a glass plate was traced by an operator using a pointer connected, by a system of levers like a pantograph, to an engraving tool moving over a copper plate. The aquatint and roulette finished engraved intaglio plate, usually circular and small (50 mm), with details of features and costume, could be inked and printed many times’ (Photoconservation.com, sub Printing Processes). The process was introduced to America by Charles Saint-Mémin.

    The miniaturist Saint-Mémin (1770-1852) had emigrated from France in 1793 to Switzerland, where he practised as an engraver. Crossing the Atlantic to Canada and then the United States, he established a portrait business in New York with his compatriot Thomas Bluget de Valdenuit (who initially produced the drawings for Saint-Mémin to engrave). When Valdenuit returned to Paris, Saint-Mémin adopted an itinerant practice all over the East Coast states, working variously at Philadelphia, Richmond, Charleston and Burlington. He too returned to France in 1814, having destroyed his drawing apparatus in a symbolic end to a prolific artistic enterprise which produced more than a thousand different portraits of significant figures in American society, including Washington, Revere and Jefferson.

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  • Par permission de M. le maire, demain Jeudi 25 Novembre 1813, Grand Spectacle de Physique universelle, ou la Réunion de toutes les expériences amusantes du monde entier... Ce charmant Spectacle sera suivi de l’exécution de différens Morceaux sur le suprenant Harmonica, objet dont les journaux n’ont jamais cessé de vanter les brillants succès qu’il a obtenu dans la Capital. by SAUNIER, Professeur de Physique. SAUNIER, Professeur de Physique. ~ Par permission de M. le maire, demain Jeudi 25 Novembre 1813, Grand Spectacle de Physique universelle, ou la Réunion de toutes les expériences amusantes du monde entier... Ce charmant Spectacle sera suivi de l’exécution de différens Morceaux sur le suprenant Harmonica, objet dont les journaux n’ont jamais cessé de vanter les brillants succès qu’il a obtenu dans la Capital. [?Calvados]. 1813.
    A large broadside advertisement for a French provincial entertainment, purportedly drawn from the worldwide travels of its animateur. ‘M. Saunier, Professeur de Physique, le seul… (more)

    A large broadside advertisement for a French provincial entertainment, purportedly drawn from the worldwide travels of its animateur. ‘M. Saunier, Professeur de Physique, le seul qui a donné ses expériences ans les quatre parties du Monde, (l’Europe, l’Asie, l’Afrique et l’Amérique,) devenu, depuis sa rentrée en France, interprête des Etrangers et Membre de la Société sur la rapport des Découvertes des quatre Nations, donnera demain sa premiere représentation de son Spectacle unique pour l’adresse’.
    Saunier’s advertised performance is also notable for a performance on the ‘Harmonica’ – at this date a version of the large ‘Armonica’, consisting of revolving concentric glass bowls, invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1761. With its ethereal and unsettling tone, the Armonica was widely manufactured in America and Europe. Working on the principle of vibration caused by rubbing the finger around the rim of a glass vessel, the instrument combined a large number of such vessels on a revolving spindle to form a kind of keyboard capable of playing quite complex pieces as well as creating atmospheric sound effects suitable for the theatre, the opera and travelling shows such as Saunier’s.

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  • Henrietta, Countess Osenvor, a sentimental Novel, in a Series of Letters to Lady Susannah Fitzroy. By Mr. Treyssac de Vergy, Counsellor in the Parliament of Paris. And Editor of the Lovers.... by TREYSSAC DE VERGY, [Pierre-Henri]. TREYSSAC DE VERGY, [Pierre-Henri]. ~ Henrietta, Countess Osenvor, a sentimental Novel, in a Series of Letters to Lady Susannah Fitzroy. By Mr. Treyssac de Vergy, Counsellor in the Parliament of Paris. And Editor of the Lovers.... London: for J. Roson, 1770.
    First edition, rare, of an epistolary novel by a Frenchman in London, who was variously described as a diplomat, an adventurer and a spy. Treyssac… (more)

    First edition, rare, of an epistolary novel by a Frenchman in London, who was variously described as a diplomat, an adventurer and a spy. Treyssac de Vergy had come to England at the time when a circle of French diplomats, including the Comte de Guerchy and the Chevalier D’Eon were making themselves notorious by involving the English courts in their interpersonal disagreements. Vergy was widely accused of being hired by de Guerchy to make an attempt on the Chevalier D’Eon’s life. He wrote several sentimental novels in English, including The Lovers and The Scotchman both noted in the preliminaries of the first volume here. Dedicated to Lady Harriet Stanhope, the novel was reprinted in Dublin in the same year and again in London on 1785 as part of The Novelist’s Magazine. ESTC: British Library, Bodley and Paxton House (Scottish Borders) only, Worldcat adds no more.

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  • ou le Carquois epistolaire de l’amour... by LE PORTEFEUILLE DES AMANS, LE PORTEFEUILLE DES AMANS, ~ ou le Carquois epistolaire de l’amour... Paris: [Limoges: L. Bargeas fils for] Masson et Yonet, 1831.
    A popular guide to writing love letters, intended for the use of young men and women. Presented in pairs, there are numerous letter samples, usually… (more)

    A popular guide to writing love letters, intended for the use of young men and women. Presented in pairs, there are numerous letter samples, usually from the the man to the woman, with her response. There is a useful synoptic table of the several types of love, together with a description of several invisible inks or ‘encres sympathiques’. Cf. Gay, III, 821 (editions of 1825 and 1842, attributed to Cuisin). The Bibliothèque nationale catalogue lists editions of 1825 and 1837 (but not our edition). All editions appear very rare.

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  • [A book form trinket or pill box. by (BOX). (BOX). ~ [A book form trinket or pill box. France, early nineteenth century].
    A DELIGHTFUL BOOK-FORM BOX, complete with gilt spine bands, gilt borders to the sides, four gilt bosses (one on the upper cover apparently missing) and… (more)

    A DELIGHTFUL BOOK-FORM BOX, complete with gilt spine bands, gilt borders to the sides, four gilt bosses (one on the upper cover apparently missing) and gilt edges. The lid incorporates a mirror and the base a hand coloured print.

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  • The Cruise of the Mary by Smith. by ‘SMITH’ [pseudonym of James O’HARA]. ‘SMITH’ [pseudonym of James O’HARA]. ~ The Cruise of the Mary by Smith. Dublin: Foster & Co, [n.d. c. 1858].
    First edition of a rare lithographed work, pseudonymously issued, but the artist/author James O’Hara is identified in this copy with a contemporary manuscript key. The… (more)

    First edition of a rare lithographed work, pseudonymously issued, but the artist/author James O’Hara is identified in this copy with a contemporary manuscript key. The album is in the form of a graphic narrative recording a yachting cruise from Ireland to Iceland by a group of friends aboard Captain Henry’s Maroquita (a fine two-masted schooner wrecked in Holyhead harbour in 1860). While the initial scenes depict the voyage out (with predictible sea-sickness) most of the images are Icelandic vignettes, with local characters and landmarks. One shows a member of the party photographing geysers with a tripod camera — surely an early record of photography in Iceland.

    The manuscript key identifies the four sailors, ‘Smith, Jones, Robinson and Brown’ as James O’Hara, Captain Sandes, Mr. Lane Fox and Captain Henry, ‘proprietor of the yacht Maroquita’ respectively. The National Library of Ireland copy bears the imprint ‘Wm. Robertson’. WorldCat locates only the copy in the Universitäts- und Stadtbibliothek, Cologne, which has the imprint of Robertson of Sackville Street, Dublin at the foot of the title-page (where ours is blank). There is also a copy in the National Library Ireland (also with Robertson imprint). No copy found in the National Library of Iceland Catalogue.

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