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Sole edition, a very rare illustrated record of British ships, commercial and naval, by ‘A Lady’, probably an amateur lithographer and the ‘T.I. Walker’ whose name appears on some of the plates (which were all printed by C. Hullmandel). Worldcat: State Library NSW and Canadian War Museum only. No copies located in British libraries. Walker not mentioned by Twyman in Early Lithographed Books.

Delille’s French translation of Georgiana Cavendish’s best-known poem, The Passage of the Mountain St Gothard (1799) appeared twice in 1802: here, and in a separate edition with plates (also published by Prosper in London). It is unclear which appeared first. The poem was written during Georgiana’s exile, and the translation is preceded with reciprocal poems of dedication between author and translator.

Agnes Maria Bennett’s Minerva Press novel, The Beggar Girl (1797) first appeared in Mme. Brayer-St.-Léon’s translation earlier in 1798, in 7 volumes. This pretty set in 10 volumes, each with a frontispiece illustration, though separately bound (and numbered on the spines 1-10) was issued as vols 5-14 of the Oeuvres complètes

‘The Beggar Girl and her Benefactors was published in seven volumes in 1797; it was supposedly based on existing characters at Tooting and was dedicated to the duchess of York, near whom Anna Bennett then lived. The Beggar Girl was very popular, and had some distinguished admirers’ (Oxford DNB).. cf. Rochedieu p. 21 (for the 7 volume edition of the same year).

First edition, rare. John Wesley had delivered a sermon at the laying of the foundation stone of the Methodist mother church in City Road in April 1777. In this critical pamphlet the ‘gentle Strictures’ promised by evangelical preacher Hill on the title-page turn out to be vitriolic criticisms of Wesley laid out in 37 chapters, attacking his self-centred address. Chapter 31 takes issue with Wesley’s perfidy in his perceived encouragement of the American revolution in Free Thoughts on the Present State of Public Affairs, in which he had stated the the British government’s attitude towards the Americans’ could no longer be defended. ESTC: UK: Birmingham, BL, Congregational Library, Rylands (3 copies), US: SMU and Wesley Theological Seminary.

Probably the first edition in French—one of several issues of the same year with the same pagination but differing title ornaments. First published in 1740 as The Chronicle of the Kings of England under the pseudonym of Nathan Ben Saddi, Dodsley here displayed his egalitarian leanings with this rewriting of English history in the style of the King James Version of the Old Testament Pentateuch. The imprint is false and it is unlikely that the French editions were actually printed in London. In this issue the engraved vignette on the title-page is a frame with a pedestal upon which are a spear, a shield, laurel wreaths and an owl, there are several variants, as enumerated in the ESTC. Rochedieu, p. 88 (noting issues with both Londres and Amsterdam imprints).

Sole edition. ‘And Enoch walked with God. Gen. V. 24.’ Apparently by an anonymous follower of the evangelical Church of England preacher, William Romaine — a spiritual meditation occasioned by a daily walk — a trope clearly derived from Romaine’s spiritual classic The Walk of Faith (1771), a work recommended in a postscript here: ‘Reader, if the perusal of this letter has been profitable unto you, and you desire to be further instructed how to live by Faith, and walk humbly and happily with your God, ---- I would recommend to you a Treatise of the Life of Faith, and one of the Walk of Faith; both by the Rev. Romaine Rector of St. Ann Blackfriars...’

One of the earliest Tudor editions in English (and published within the author’s lifetime) of this celebrated treatise on ‘firsts’, inventions and origins, which includes some of the earliest accounts in English of the invention of printing, theatre, mathematics, medicine, magic, religion, law, government (as well as wine, prostitution and warm baths). First published in Latin in 1499 (Venice) and considerably augmented in 1521, De inventoribus rerum digested a huge mass of classical, biblical and contemporary learning and became a Renaissance bestseller. Vergil revised it continually and as many as forty editions appeared before the author’s death in 1555. The English translation, the present abridgement by Thomas Langley, did not appear until 1546, by which time the Urbino-born Polydore had been resident in England for several decades. A diplomat, scholar, historian and humanist, Vergil counted Henry VIII, Desiderius Erasmus, Thomas More, Cuthbert Tunstall, Thomas Linacre and Baldessare Castiglione among his acquaintances and correspondents. Langley’s dedication for the translation was to Sir Anthony Denny, a prominent courtier and close counsellor of Henry VIII.
The work is divided into eight books, from which Langley makes succinct abridgements, of which a selection of chapter headings gives a flavour:
I. 9. ‘The begynnyng of Tragedies, Comedies, Satyres, and newe Comedies; 11. ‘Who founde Musyke’; 12. ‘Who found Musicall instruments’; 14. ‘Astrologie’; 15. ‘Who founde Geometrie, Artihmetike’; 16. ‘Physike’; 17. ‘The inventours of herbes medicinable’; 18. ‘The beginnyng of Magike’; 19. ‘Two kyndes of divination’. II. 1. ‘The originall of lawes’; 2. ‘Who ordeyned the first gouvernaunces’; 6. ‘Who set furth books fyrst, or made a library, Printyng, paper, parchement, arte of memory’ (which includes the observation: ’Truely the com[m]odite of liberaries is right profitable & necessary, but in co[m]parison of the crafte of printyng it is nothyng, both because one ma[n] may printe more in one day, then many men in many years could wryte: And also it preserveth both Greke & Latine auctours fro the dau[n]ger of corruption. It was found in Germany at Mogunce [Mainz] by one J. Cuthenbergus a knight, he found moreover the Inke by his devise that printers used).’ This printed reference to Gutenberg and the originator of this invention is quite likely the first in English — though William Caxton referred to the origins of ‘arte and crafte of pryntyng’ in at least one of his colophons, none mentioned Gutenberg himself.
Among other entries we find treatments of: war, Olympiades, plays, metals, coins, painting, ‘wyne, oyle, honye, chese, and strange trees broughte into Italy’, labyrinths, theatres, prostitution and brothels, and Christian and Moslem origins and customs.
Though printed in English three times in 1546, these first English editions are remarkably rare. Ours is dated 25 January 1546 and is listed first of the three by STC, but it was perhaps preceded by the editions dated 16 April 1546, given that a new year began on Lady Day (25 March) in old style dating, so the 15 January 1546, old style, actually fell in 1547, new style. In any case, the printing of this issue preceded the accession of Edward VI, and contains his woodcut badge as Prince of Wales. The printer, Richard Grafton, had endured a turbulent period in the early 1540s and was twice committed to prison — once for printing seditious texts by Melanchthon and once for printing the Great Bible. He evidently enjoyed the patronage of the young prince Edward, and, on his accession to the throne, was appointed King’s Printer, giving him the sole right to print all Acts and Statutes, among other privileges. His career as a printer ended on Edward’s death when he printed a proclamation for a hoped-for accession of Lady Jane Grey in which he signed himself ‘Printer to the Queen’. He was promptly imprisoned by Mary.
Provenance: Sotheby’s, June 14th, 1965, lot 231 (Traylen, £55); Blackwell, Centenary Catalogue, 1979, item 27, £450 (listed there as the first edition in English); private collection. STC 24654. STC lists two other printings of 1546: 24655 (also Grafton, dated 16 April) and 24656 (another issue of the same, portions reset, with both title and colophon dated 16 April). In an article of 1888, John Ferguson suggested that these 16 April editions/issues preceded the 25 January edition (though this was not adopted by the editors of STC); John Ferguson, ‘Bibliographical Notes on the English Translation of Polydore Vergil’s work, De Inventoribus Rerum’, 1888, pp. 17 et seq.

First edition of this defence of Wilde by his loyal friend, composer and pianist, Dalhousie Young. ‘Published after Oscar Wilde's trial, during which Wilde's works were used as evidence of his ‘immorality'’ Apologia pro Oscar Wilde sets out to defend Wilde and his writing. Dalhousie Young argues that a work of fiction is not automatically a work of autobiography; fiction does reveal an author's inner secrets or true character. Powerfully, Young furthermore publicly questions whether it is right that sexual acts between two consenting adults of the same sex should be outlawed (see p. 38), or looked upon as a ‘sin’’ (British Library).

This is the second of two issues of the first edition, distinguished by its darker wrapper. Millard, Bibliography of Oscar Wilde, p. 574, no. 679.

First edition in French of the Italianate gothic novel Angelo Guicciardini, or, The Bandit of the Alps: a Romance (London, Colburn 1809). Rare. Sophia Francis’ other novels include: Constance de Lindensdorf, Vivonia and The Nun of Misericordia. They were all popular circulating and subscription library titles. No British copies in Jisc/Library Hub (formerly COPAC), Worldcat: University of Virginia only in US. cf. The Novel in English: a bibliographical Addition to Andrew Block’s The English Novel, 263, a.

First edition in French of The Castilian, an historical novel in English (Colburn, 1829), by a notable Spanish historical novelist, very much in the vein of Scott. Though most of his novels were in Spanish, Trueba y Cosío had been educated partly in England, and this attempt in English attracted favourable reviews. The translation is by Defauconpret, best known for his translations of Scott. Rare: Worldcat lists the Bn copy only.

A rare satirical elegy and epitaph for the celebrated electrical eel, who could no longer rise to the occasion. A reissue of the sheets of the first edition of 1777 with a cancel title, of this elaborate addition to the corpus of salacious 1770s pamphlets devoted to the subject of the electrical eel, a topic of serious scientific enquiry and popular merriment. This one continues the phallic joke and manages to draw in the hapless Chevalier D’Eon (whose sex was then popularly debated) alongside the lecherous Earl of Harrington.

‘If the Gymnotus Electricus, lately exhibited to the Public, be really dead, it is to be hoped that we shall have no more of these witty indecencies’ (Monthly Review, Nov. 1777). ESTC: Harvard and Princeton only worldwide of this issue. ESTC gives the pagination [4], 29, [1], but both the 2 copies reported have only pp [2] before title, as here, though it is perhaps likely the work was issued with a half-title or initial blank not present in surviving copies.

An unusual New Years’ gift from an unnamed compiler ‘for my dearly beloved Isabella Sophia Ochando de la Vanda. January one, 1830’; a manuscript compilation of patriotic verse and pious texts by hymnodist Edmeston, Shepherd, Southey (’The Victory’), Millman, Bowring, Burden, Emmerson, and Carlyle’s ‘Hymn before public worship translated from the Arabic’. Most of the texts are in English but a couple, by the Mechitarian cleric Nerses Clajense, are in Spanish and French respectively.

The two fine watercolours show HMS Victory in battle and a fallen arab horseman.

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’.

An interesting selection of watercolours, drawings and lithographs by a Victorian woman. Some are typical, if very accomplished, holiday or genre scenes, but there is an interesting scattering of domestic scenes: a women sewing, another at a substantial treadle sewing machine, making mincemeat, crocheting, picking peas, and drawing in an album. Of special interest are 5 original and probably unique lithographs, evidently the work of the same artist, nicely demonstrating the contemporary enthusiasm for amateur lithography among women. Some are trials for letterheads, giving the address: ‘The Rookery, George Lane, Parish of Woodford’ [Essex]. Among the travel watercolours are some really lovely seaside scenes and a finely observed interior of a railway sleeping compartment on the Geneva-Paris line.

First edition, a pocket description of the British Isles, historical and geographical, but with reflections on British character and customs. ‘La Nation Angloise aime beaucoup les Spectacles surtout la Tragédie... Les Anglois n’ont la vivacité des François, ni la lenteure des peuples septrentrionaux... Les Femmes d’Angleterre sont maîtresses de leurs volontés & même de leurs caprices...’ It also appeared in the same year with a La Haye imprint.

First published in 1641, as Herōologia Anglorum, or, An help to English history. Wing, H1719

A good example of one of Thomas Phillipps’s anastatically-printed lithograph facsimiles of manuscripts, for which copies of the original manuscript were transferred to zinc plates for lithography. In this case the text is a copy of his own transcripts from the records of Herald’s seventeenth-century Visitations and their disqualifications of arms born by gentlemen without authority. Sir Thomas Phillipps as a printer and patron of lithographic printing has been extensively studied and discussed by Michael Twyman in Early Lithographed Books (1990) — he printed many himself at Middle Hill, and supervised the production of others by printers such as Appel, who had exhibited new methods of anastatic printing at the Great Exhibition in 1851. Chambers, Early Private Presses, Middle Hill 41; Holzenberg, The Middle Hill Press, 88. Worldcat lists copies at the Grolier Club only outside Europe.

An eighteenth-century work on feudal barons and the history of land ownership in England. It was written by Madox, a legal antiquity and historian whose first appearance was in the publication Formulare Anglicanum in 1701. He produced a learned dissertation on ancient charters, which was praised by Bishop William Nicolson as having provided an ‘unspeakable service to our students in law and antiquities.’ (English Historical Library, 1776).

Baronia Anglica was first printed in 1736 and our issue is ‘a reissue of the sheets of the 1736 edition printed by William Bowyer (T97064), without the index to his ‘History of the Exchequer’ (which occupied the final 54 sheets...) with a cancel title page; Bowyer also printed the new titles; his records show 500 + 50 [large-paper?] + ‘500 more to give away’. The large-paper copies may show variation in placement of press figures, or in their presence or absence; the details are unclear’ (ESTC).

Extensive antiquarian transcripts from manuscript armorials and visitation documents (mainly sixteenth- and seventeenth-century) in the British Museum. Including Harleian MSS 1174, 1397, 1561, 4756, 7565, 1045, 1301 and Sloane MSS 4972-3. Evidently once part of a larger sequence, the volumes are marked VIII and IX respectively.

First edition. Edward Jacob ‘antiquary and naturalist, was born in Canterbury, the eldest son of Edward Jacob (d. 1756), surgeon and alderman, who served as mayor of Canterbury in 1727–8, and Jane, daughter of Strangford Violl, vicar of Upminster. About 1735 he moved to Feversham [sic] where he lived at 78 Preston Street and practised as a surgeon, following in his father's and grandfather's footsteps. Among his patients was Lord Sondes of Lees Court, Sheldwich. The Jacobs were a long-established east Kent family and several members had served as mayors and magistrates in Sandwich and Dover. Actively interested in local affairs, Jacob was four times mayor of Faversham—in 1749, 1754, 1765, and 1775...

Jacob interested himself in the history of Faversham soon after he had moved there, ‘having an early propensity to the study of antiquities’. He was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries on 5 June 1755, and in 1774 published The History of the Town and Port of Faversham, dedicated to Lord Sondes’ (Oxford DNB).

This is one of the standard copies with 15 plates, some having an 4 additional plates. With a good local provenance (Philip Neame, Faversham-born recipient of the Victoria Cross for service on the Western Front and of an Olympic gold medal in 1924, apparently the only recipient of both).� Bibliotheca Cantiana 198-9.