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First edition of this important act acknowledging the success of John Harrison’s ‘H4’ chronometer in the accurate calculation of longitude, among the most important scientific breakthroughs of the eighteenth century. ‘And whereas the Utility of the Invention of the said John Harrison has been proved by a late Voyage to Jamaica, under the Directions of the Commissioners of the Longitude; And whereas the said Commissioners at their Meeting on the Seventeenth Day of August last did adjudge, that by the Trial made of the said Instrument, it was found of considerable Use to the Publick, and did thereupon make an Order for the Payment of the Sum of Two thousand Pounds to the said John Harrison...’

Harrison believed the extraordinary accuracy of his fourth marine chronometer (it lost just five seconds on an 81-day trial to Jamaica) should be enough to win the full £20,000 promised by the British government’s 1714 longitude prize, but the ‘Act for the Encouragement’ insisted on further tests and disclosures. ‘It was intended to enforce the Commissioners’ directions that Harrison make “a full and clear Discovery of the Principles” of his latest timekeeper to eleven named witnesses so that the details could be published in order to allow other clockmakers to reproduce the designs. Once these witnesses or the majority of them certified that Harrison had done so, then the Treasurer of the Navy was to pay the clockmaker £5000...’ (Baker). The 1763 Act for the Encouragement is the first official government acknowledgement that the revolutionary H4 chronometer had succeeded, but it took Harrison most of the rest of his life to extract the prize money from the Board of Longitude, despite his publication of An Account of the Proceedings in order to the Discovery of Longitude in 1763 (see Printing and the Mind of Man, 208).

Several copies of this act have appeared at auction in recent years (notably the Streeter Library copy sold by Christie’s in New York for $14,400 in 2007) almost always physically disbound from complete sessional volumes of the Acts of Parliament. Though separately published with a general title (as here) individual acts were almost always bound together in yearly volumes as their pagination dictated — our copy is preserved in such a yearly volume with 24 other acts. Acts of this era were printed in limited numbers, usually estimated at around 1100 copies only. Baker, ‘Longitude Acts’ in Longitude Essays, Cambridge Digital Library, accessed June 2021. ESTC records just 8 copies of the act (3 in the UK, 5 in the US) and Worldcat adds a small handful more, though copies are under-recorded since they are often (especially in the UK) catalogued within volumes and sets of the Acts of Parliament.

Sole edition. A thin man in shabby clothes kneels in prayer before a candle on a chair, his toes poking through his worn shoes. The window panes above a heavy locked strongbox are broken. ‘The miser confesses he owns nine houses, estates in Essex, mortgages in Hertford, large landed speculations in Russell Square and the neighbourhood, reversions of estates, trading ventures, “Mermaid” sloop, funded property, Government securities, &c. &c. he is beseeching an increase in his means, success in investments, and a rise in the “Stocks”’ (Grego). Rowlandson produced a series of such ‘Prayers’ as squibs in 1801. Grego, Rowlandson the Caricaturist, II, 30.

A superb complete set of Lévy’s cyanotypes depicting English domestic interiors of the 1880s and 90s printed directly from Henry Bedford Lemere’s negatives. The photographs primarily document the interiors of houses in England, Scotland, and Wales (as well as a small number of public buildings) and include excellent depictions of paintings and furniture. They include entrance halls, reception rooms, stairwells and fireplaces, with key details such as paintings, furniture, panelling and tiling clearly recorded, all allowing identification.

These are rare, though two sets survive in American libraries: at Yale Center for British Art and at the Getty ― the latter incomplete but with a partial list of subjects, allowing identification of some 50 of the 87 prints ― Parham Park (Sussex), Astley Hall and Standish Hall (Lancashire), Swan House (Chelsea, London), Monkhams (Woodford, Essex), Curling Hall (Ayrshire) and The Cottage (Walton Heath, Surrey). Of special interest are the three plates (numbers 1-3) of Dawpool, (Thurstaston, Cheshire) home of Thomas Henry Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line, which clearly show Rossetti’s painting The Loving Cup purchased by Ismay in 1892. Another is of 49 Prince’s Gate, London, home of Frederick Richard Leyland showing another Rossetti, La Pia together with Burne-Jones’s Wine of Circe. 49 Prince’s Gate was one of the most celebrated aesthetic interiors of the period with a magnificent staircase (transferred from Northumberland House) and many other works of art including French furniture, Flemish tapestries, oriental Porcelain and Italian bronzes. Leyland’s collection was sold in 1892, making this image an especially valuable record.

‘[Bedford Lemere & Co.] was very astute in selling large numbers of its images to architects and craftsmen who wanted to appraise themselves of what their colleagues were doing or build up a body of visual examples for use in their own work’ [Culture 24, 7 May 2010]. They also clearly licensed some of their images to publisher’s abroad, in this case to Albert Lévy whose celebrated cyanotypes were widely distributed in France and the United States but are now rare in complete sets.

Sole edition of this comic guide to London and the English, issued to coincide with the Great Exhibition. The four letterpress pages give some limited information for visitors: English money, the major sites (headed of course with the Crystal Palace), several hotels, inns and restaurants, carriage and boat fare, a few useful phrases and some baffling tips on British manners ― but this is really a vehicle for the 14 comic plates. They depict 46 numbered scenes or characters including: a coachman and a sweep, The Times newspaper, two pugilists, judges, beggars, hawkers, a Scotsman, huge barrels of drink (labelled ‘Monster Cask’) and a ratcatcher. The cover attributes the lithographs to ‘Mr Cric’ and the text to ‘Mr Crac’ and gives Paris and London booksellers’ addresses, with a price of ‘1 Shelling’. Worldcat lists the Vanderbilt University copy only; no British copies located in Library Hub; the CCFr lists a single copy in France (Bar le Duc).

A rare large-format toy theatre print with figures for cutting out and mounting from a performance at Astley’s Amphitheatre, which was then managed by Andrew Ducrow, the father of circus equestrianism. The plate is unsigned other than by the publisher William West and is unattributed in the British Museum print catalogue, but it is of high quality. The BM copy was acquired with the nineteenth-century collection of toy theatre prints assembled by Ralph Thomas, who had made a tentative attribution to William Blake in Notes and Queries in 1898 (June 4th, p. 455). The British Museum did not adopt the attribution, though there is certainly something of Blake’s style in the print. William West was the pioneer of the Regency toy theatre print, commissioning work from both Cruickshank brothers, Flaxman, Dighton and Brooke.

A rare pictorial guide to naval ensigns. This 1807 issue in book form is made up from all 18 portions of an engraved chart first issued by Heather in 1800, with an added letterpress label. The flags include all the known naval ensigns, including those of privateers and pirates. 125 naval ensigns begin with the principal British flags and continue with those of all the major European countries and their principal ports, then China, Persia, the United States and the major trading companies, such as the Dutch and British East India Companies. There are two pirate flags, entitled ‘Rovers’, and ‘Algerine Rover’ [Barbary Pirates]: the ‘Rover’, coloured red, is marked with a winged hourglass, a raised arm holding a cutlass and a skull and cross bones; the ‘Algerine Rover’ is also coloured red but marked with a skull.

The 1800 chart bore an engraved dedication at the head ‘To the Right Honourable the Master Wardens, elder Brethren of the Trinity House’ not used in the book, though the Trinity House arms are added as a cover label.� Rare, especially in book form. Worldcat lists the National Maritime Museum and UCLA copies only.

Architect John Nash is impaled on the spire of his new All Souls church in Langham Place, Marylebone, completed in 1823 as part of his grand plans for the costly ‘improved’ swathe of London stretching from the lower end of Regent’s Street to Regent’s Park. With its rotunda and idiosyncratic steeple thhe landmark church was not universally admired. This plate is subtitled: ‘Dedicated without Permission, to the Church Commissioners. Providence sends Meat, The Devil sends Cooks, Parliament sends Funds, But, who sends the Architects?!!!’
Dorothy George describes it thus: ‘An illustration of the debate of 30 Mar. when H. G. Bennett demanded the name of the architect of the church being built in Langham Place. ‘He should also like to hear what this mass of deformity had cost’, and professed himself ready to subscribe towards the cost of demolition. Under pressure, Arbuthnot admitted that the architect was Nash.... [who] is reputed to have commented to his assistants on this print: ‘See, gentlemen, how criticism has exalted me.’ The Times, 10 April, derided the spire as adapted to spike cranes in a war of the future with pigmies, envisaged by the architect’. BM Satires X, 1952.

First edition in French of Aphorismes Civill and Militarie (London, 1613) comprising 246 political and military aphorisms selected from the Italian historian Guicciardini, designed to teach the lessons of history in a pithy and pragmatic form, in the spirit of Montaigne. The original Aphorismes had been dedicated by the English courtier Robert Dallington to Henry, Prince of Wales and later to Prince Charles. Mouchemberg’s free translation, retaining the structure of the original, with glosses and apparatus, was dedicated to Antoine Coiffier-Ruzé, Marquis d’Effiat, who had negotiated the marriage of the Prince of Wales (later Charles I) with Louis XIII’s sister, Henrietta Maria of France in 1625. Mouchemberg later published a continuation of another British work — Argenis by John Barclay.

Dallington (1561-1636) himself is an interesting figure in European literary culture. Initially educated at Cambridge (Corpus Christi) but without taking a degree, he published translations from the Hypnerotomachia as The Strife of Love in 1592, dedicated to the memory of Sir Philip Sidney and to the Earl of Essex (into whose circle he was drawn). He made at least two grand tours, one in a party with Inigo Jones. His View of France was first published in 1604 and his Survey of … Tuscany in 1605, both written for private circulation. Rare: WorldCat lists the British Library as the only location outside continental Europe, with no North American copies.

First edition in French of any part of Eden’s The State of the Poor. Or, an History of the Labouring Classes in England (1797) one of the classic works in the history of economics and the foundation of the discipline of sociology. This extensive but partial translation formed numbers 21 and 24 of the rare Recueil de Mémoires sur les établissemens d’humanité, continuously paginated across the two volumes. The editors’ preface notes the timeliness of such a translation at a time of revolutionary upheaval when no system of social security for the poor existed in France. Issued anonymously the translation is attributed to A.-C. Duquesnoy by Rochedieu. It precedes the edition translated by La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt of 1800 and is very rare. Rochedieu, Bibliography of Translations of English Works 1700-1800, 95. Cf. Printing and the Mind of Man, 249 (the English edition). Besides the British library copy (incomplete, apparently the first volume only), Worldcat locates no other copies outside continental Europe.

First edition of this diminutive near-miniature tribute to Queen Victoria ‘Dedicated to Children in all Places of Her Imperial Majesty’s Dominions’.

Alphabet (upper and lower case), several decorative lines and two verses: ‘Is there ambition in my heart / search gracious God and see...’ [Isaac Watts] and ‘Teach me to live / that I may dread/ the grave as little / as my bed // Teach me to die ‘ that so I may / with joy behold /the judgement day’ [by Thomas Ken, later reused by Thomas Hardy in Jude the Obscure]. Needlework samplers remain one of the most widespread manifestations of the teaching and learning of basic literacy among girls and young women and, as here, reflect a strongly moralistic background.

Greenaway’s elegant ‘Procession’ greetings card set consisted of just two cards, but each was produced with variant verses.

This set includes all four variants of each of the two cards.

Card 1 (Blue border):
(a) ‘A garland fair for Christmas day...’
(b) ‘My Valentine in every rose discern...’
(c) ‘Well we love our roses sweet...’
(d) ‘Thro the Year that dawns...’

Card 2 (Pink border):
(a) ‘A garland fair for Christmas day...’
(b) ‘Let’s love and live together, dear...’
(c) ‘Well we love our roses sweet...’
(d) ‘Thro the Year that dawns...’ Schuster & Engen, Kate Greenaway, 284.

The three greetings cards comprising the larger version of Greenaway’s Party Girl set, each present here in several variants, listed below according to Schuster & Engen 282.

Card 1 Girl with Badminton set
a) recto ‘Christmas’ verso ‘I wish you all the joy that you can wish’.
b) recto ‘Christmas’ verso ‘May the day be as happy as you could wish’.
c) recto ‘New Year’ verso ‘Thy own wish, wish I thee in every place!’.
d) recto ‘Valentine’ verso ‘To bear my love to you to-day’.
e) recto ‘Greeting’ verso ‘Thy own wish, wish I thee in every place’.

Card 2 Girl in rust coat and beaver hat
b) recto ‘Christmas’ verso ‘Wishing you every happiness and blessing’.
d) recto ‘New Year’ verso ‘May the day be as happy as you could wish’.
d variant) recto ‘New Year’ verso ‘Wishing you every happiness and blessing’.
e) recto ‘Valentine’ verso ‘From one who loves you dearly’.
g) recto ‘Greeting’ verso ‘Thy own wish, wish I thee in every place’.
h) recto ‘Greeting’ verso ‘May the day be as happy as you could wish’.

Card 3 Girl in green dress
a) recto ‘Christmas’ verso ‘Thy own wish, wish I thee in every place’.
b) recto ‘Christmas’ verso ‘Wishing you every happiness and blessing’.
c variant) recto ‘New Year’ verso ‘I wish you all the joy that you can wish’.
d) recto ‘Valentine’ verso ‘I bring you some flowers from your Valentine’.
e) recto ‘Greeting’ verso ‘Wishing you every happiness and blessing’.
f) recto ‘Greeting’ verso ‘May the day be as happy as you could wish’. Schuster & Engen, Kate Greenaway, 282.

One of two versions of this early Kate Greenaway set, this one apparently issued for use as Christmas cards. The daughter of a dressmaker and a jobbing wood engraver, Kate received her first book illustration commissions while still at school. She attended the Royal Female School of Art, though was frustrated by the strictures governing forbidding life drawing and so enrolled at Heatherley School of Fine Art where she met Edward Burne-Jones, Edward Poynter, and Walter Crane. By this time she was already producing regular book illustrations and was in demand by producers of newly-fashionable greetings cards. Schuster & Engen, Kate Greenaway, 291.

First edition of this juvenile guide to the manners, customs and costumes of peoples of the known world. The plates include: France, England, Russia, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Greece, Turkey, Persia, the East Indies, China, Japan, Barbary (North Africa), Egypt, Canaries, Africa, United States, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Argentina, Java, Australia and New Zealand.

This is one of Aubert’s Récréations instructives series for young people. The ownership inscription is of Amédée Girod de l’Ain, lawyer and politician who became Minister of Public Education and Religious Affairs in 1832. Gumuchian, 5038.

First edition, bound from the parts, which had appeared from October 1846 to April 1848. Hatton & Cleaver, pp. 227-250; cf. Smith, Charles Dickens, I, 8.

First edition, one of 250 copies (of a total edition of 280). Thomas Willement was one of the pioneers of the nineteenth-century gothic revival. He worked alongside his better-known contemporary Pugin on several projects, but never very happily: Pugin later (unfairly) accused Willement of being only interested in money. Willement is perhaps best known for his stained glass in the medieval style (St George’s Chapel, Windsor, Hampton Court, Barbados cathedral). Davington Priory in Faversham (acquired by him in 1845) was an exercise in the complete medieval revival of a much altered priory house and church, involving polychromatic painted decoration, stained glass, and designs for encaustic tiles, together with purchases of furniture and fittings. Much of the work described in the Historical Sketch remains intact. 250 copies of this descriptive publication were printed on ‘foolscap quarto’ paper, with a further 30 copies on tinted ‘crown quarto’.

A satire on contemporary women’s fashion. The 1820s had seen considerable change in women’s fashions, with neoclassical straight lines and sparse adornments giving way to a more exhuberant and romantic style with more emphasis on curvaceous shapes, cheekily satirised here with wine glass and fruit.�
An inverted wine-glass (claret shape), partly fluted, represents a woman; the bowl is a bell-shaped petticoat, the stem a pinched waist and bodice; the wide base forms the brim of her plateau-hat on which stands a cork with a metal rim and upstanding ring to form the narrow jam-pot crown. On the base (or brim) are bunches of grapes from which hang trails of vine leaves. Tied symmetrically to the stem are two pears, representing inflated sleeves, the stalks serving for wrists and hands. Below the design: ‘Turn a tumbler up side down / The foot for a hat and a cork for the crown /Some grapes for trimming, will give an air / And as for Sleeves have ready a pear /When join'd to gather tis sure to tell /A picture true, of a modern belle’.

Issued under the ‘Paul Pry’ pseudonym. The 'P. P.' of the signature reads: ‘what have we got here by Jove what we are all fond of a Lass & à Glass my service to you Gents tis but a frail fair after all’. BM Satires 15611.

First edition with an illustration. A treatise on miniature painting on glass, in the form of a dialogue between the author and his female pupil, a marquise. Vispré’s method was based on the transfer application of an engraving to a glass or mirrored surface, allowing the amateur artist to make superb reproductions in ‘under three hours’. The book, which first appeared in 1755 (without a plate), seems to have been as much an advertisement for Vispré as both a tutor and supplier of artists’ materials to a fashionable clientele, and the two earlier editions (like this one, surprisingly rare) give his address in the rue Pavée, beside the Comédie Italienne.

By 1766, when this edition appeared, Vispré had settled in London making his way as a successful portrait painter and miniaturist, exhibiting first with the Society of Artists and then quite frequently at the Royal Academy. This edition is the first to include a plate, perhaps designed to be used by the pupil as a test piece.

One of a set of three Gillray prints of medical conditions that were also astute studies in facial expression.

The printer, Hannah Humphrey, is an interesting figure. Known as ‘Mrs Humphrey’ although she was unmarried, she was sister of printer William Humphrey from whose address in St Martin's Lane she published her first prints. She became the leading publisher of expensive satirical prints, especially by Gillray who worked for her exclusively from 1791, and who lived in her house for the last twenty years of his life. ‘The two lived together in circumstances of domestic intimacy for many years, but so discreetly that the prurient gossips of the next generation could find little to say against them. When Gillray made his will in 1807 he left all his possessions 'to my dearest friend Hannah Humphrey' (Oxford DNB). BM Satires 10304.