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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.

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).

First trade edition in a very presentable dust-jacket.

First edition, published October 13th 1927.

First edition, trade issue.

First published in 1886.

First edition in French of The Scarlet Letter (1850), a signal rarity. Forgues (b. 1813) was a close friend of Stendhal and had been a critic at the Revue des Deux Mondes, specialising in works in English. Not only did he introduce The Scarlet Letter to French readers, but he also reviewed Moby Dick in 1853 and produced translations of Jane Eyre and Uncle Tom’s Cabin (both under the pseudonym of ‘Old Nick’). Though the text of La Lettre Rouge is considerably abridged from Hawthorne’s original, the Revue britannique in 1853 claimed that ‘Plus d’un passage nous a paru supérieur à l’original... Il y a dans la Lettre Rouge une petite fille appellée Perle, qui est un ravissante créature, un ange comme ceux de Charles Dickens. Malgré son nom diabolique, Old Nick a prêté encore de nouveaux charmes à cetter perle céleste’. Brown, A Bibliography of Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1968 [1905], p. 98. C.E. Frazer Clark’s bibliography of Hawthorne does not include translations. WorldCat lists US copies at Harvard, Peabody Essex, Johns Hopkins and Virginia.

First edition, rare, printed in small numbers (perhaps 100 copies) for private circulation, with the first trade edition following in the same year (printed by Advocat). It followed the succès de scandale of Claire Duras’ previous novel Ourika (1823), now prized as the first European novel with a heroine of African origin. ‘Despite not receiving as much scholarly attention as Ourika or finding fame as part of a literary scandal like Olivier ou le Secret, Édouard has been considered Duras’s finest work (Sainte-Beuve, 71). Written in 1821 and first published in 1825, Édouard uses the lens of class to address similar themes of social exclusion and identity conflict to Duras’s two other finished novellas. Set in the 1770s, the plot focuses on the son of a celebrated lawyer from Lyon, and is generally read as an attack on class boundaries...’ French Writing and Culture: The Nineteenth-Century, 1800-1900 (Literary Encyclopaedia) WorldCat lists US copies of the first edition at Cornell, Harvard and Yale only.

First edition, a rare historical novel by an extraordinary woman, conventionally remembered as a mistress of Napoleon. Born Pauline Bellisle in 1778, the daughter of a clockmaker, and later apprenticed as a milliner, she married French cavalry officer Jean-Noëlle Fourès. When he was posted to Egypt, Pauline travelled with him, evading detection during the voyage dressed in men’s clothing. Napoleon was captivated by her, apparently considering divorcing Joséphine in consequence, and sent her husband away on a spurious mission back to France, then invited Pauline to share his quarters in Egypt. She thereafter took the role of an unofficial consort and divorced her husband, only to be left behind in Egypt when Napoleon returned to France. She narrowly escaped death during the Cairo revolt of 1798 before returning to France herself the following year. Granted a house and pension by Napoleon she remarried, only to divorce once more after a renewed liaison with Napoleon (now emperor). She went into exile in Brazil with a third husband after Napoleon’s fall, returning to France in 1837 and finding success as a painter and musician and gathering an important art collection. She was the author of two novels, Wentworth (1813) and Aloïze (1814), both now very rare. WorldCat locates copies outside France at BL and Yale only. In France, there are copies at Strasbourg and the Bibliothèque nationale.

First edition in French of Wuthering Heights (1847) which also includes the first significant critical study of Brontë in French as its preface by the translator. Wyzewa was the first writer to formally introduce Emily Brontë into France — the only prior attempt, thirty-four years earlier, had been a brief allusion to her as the sister of Charlotte Brontë in an article by Emile Montégut for the Revue des deux mondes. Wyzewa gives both an account of the critical reception of Wuthering Heights in England and a biographical sketch. The title Wuthering Heights was not attached to the novel in French before the succeeding edition of 1925, entitled Les Hauts de Hurlevent.

Téodor de Wyzewa, born Teodor Wyżewski in Poland (1862–1917) emigrated to France in 1869. A critic of both literature and music, he was one of the pioneers of symbolism and made his name with brilliant analyses of poems by Mallarmé. Exceptionally rare. Worldcat lists the British Library copy as the only copy outside France. No US copies located. Bénédicte Coste, ‘Un amant: la première traduction française de Wuthering Heights par Téodor de Wyzewa’, Études anglaises 2002/1 (55), pp. 3 à 13.

A handsome A. and C. Black publisher’s binding.

A good example of splendid A. and C. Black publisher’s binding, the design almost certainly by John Leighton. The binding was offered in several colours: red, green and blue, some with additional blocking in blue or red. This variant is perhaps the most elaborate, in three colours.

First edition. A splendid Victorian gift book with wood engravings by the Dalziel brothers and a striking Celtic binding design. ‘This unsigned cloth binding is one of the most elaborate designs of the period. The calligraphic writing recalls Celtic models, although it also refers to the Viking art of the north-east of England. Buchanan’s glum poetry bears little relation to the splendour of the binding, which acts as a hard sell for the book’s contents. To maximize sales, the binding was issued in several colours’ (Simon Cooke, Victorian Web).

Number 184 of 350 copies, signed by the artist. ‘Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale never married, and from 1903 to 1943 she lived with her sister, Kate, who was also unmarried, at 23 Elsham Road, Shepherd's Bush. She travelled often to the continent and was clearly influenced by the fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century art which she saw on visits to Italy. There were further exhibitions of her works at Leighton House in 1904, with a catalogue containing appreciative remarks by George Frederic Watts, and at Dowdeswell’s in 1905 and 1909. She continued her illustrative work, which from about 1905 consisted of both line drawings and watercolours made for reproduction as half-tone colour plates. In 1911 two editions of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King (de luxe and popular) were published with illustrations from her watercolours while the originals were on show in another of her one-woman exhibitions, this time at the Leicester Galleries. From that year she taught in the art school in Kensington founded by Byam Shaw’ (Oxford DNB).

First edition. An unnumbered artist’s proof copy from Edition A (which consisted of 250 numbered copies, plus 50 artist’s proof copies). The total edition was of 550 bound copies and 120 loose sets of the plates only. Edition A was issued with an additional loose signed print ‘Cavafy II’, sometimes framed by owners and not present in this copy. The very rare publisher’s prospectus and an uncompleted order form are inserted at the rear. The plates are not edition stamped on the rear.
‘Cavafy wrote two kinds of poem — love and historical. The fourteen selected for this book are, with the exception of Caesarian, poems of homosexual love: short, unrhymed, deeply felt but totally unsentimental. They appear in a new, hitherto unpublished translation by Nikos Stangos and Stephen Spender... For several years Hockney has admired the work of Cavafy’ (from the Prospectus). The book was included by Neil McGregor in the BBC/British Museum’s History of the World in 100 Objects as an emblem of the struggle for human rights and sexual freedom ― homosexual acts in private were decriminalised in Britain only in 1967, the year Hockney’s startling collection appeared (McGregor, pp. 635-9).

[uniform with:] Les Rieurs anglais, ou Supplément a l’Encyclopédie comique, traduction libre de l’anglais. Paris: Marchand, An X [1801/2]. 2 vols bound together, pp. [4], viii, [4], 132; [4], 156, [4],20, including half-titles, plus engraved frontispiece to each volume.

4 vols bound in 2, 12mo (175 × 95 mm), partially uncut. Later red straight grain quarter morocco, spines elaborately gilt (by Champs-Stroobants Sr). Excellent copies.

First edition. A rare collection of comic extracts translated or abridged from English authors including: Shakespeare, Gay, Johnson, Milton, Sheridan, Fielding, Goldsmith, Richardson, Young, Smollett, Sterne and Swift. Bertin (1751-1819) had worked in England as a tutor and translator and was the author of some 50 works on various subjects, including several translations. While in England he had studied Samuel Taylor’s system of shorthand and published, in 1791 a French edition of An Essay intended to establish a Standard for a universal System of Stenography, successfully introducing modern shorthand to the French public. Encyclopédie comique and Les Rieurs anglais are partly adverts for this system, with their shorthand plates and supplement entitled ‘Dissertation critique et curieuse sur l‘Okigraphie’. The second volume of Encyclopédie comique has a frontispiece depicting an English ‘Wife Sale’ (vente d’une femme Angloise à l’encan) which illustrates a short account of this peculiarly English custom or ritual observed in rural or working-class communities. ‘It can be seen as a bleak transaction, or as street-theatre, or as a shaming ritual’ (E. P. Thompson, ‘Sale of Wives’ in Customs in Common, 1993, p. 447). Gay II, 98 (first work only); Rochedieu, Bibliography of French Translations of English Works, 1700-1800, Appendix III (Collections of works translated from the English), 30.

First Dublin edition, printed in the same year as the first (London) edition. The ten letters comprise: On the First Principles of Religion; On the Study of the holy Scriptures (2); On the Regulation of the Heart and Affections (2); On the Government of the Temper; On Oeconomy; On Politeness and Accomplishments; On Geography and Chronology; On the Manner of Reading and Course of reading History. It is dedicated to Elizabeth Montagu. ‘Montagu encouraged Chapone, presumably in the summer of 1770, when the two friends were travelling in Scotland, to publish the letters on education she had been sending her niece since 1765. Chapone was grateful to Montagu for correcting the manuscript, and the text, Letters on the Improvement of the Mind (1773), was Chapone’s most celebrated work’ (Oxford DNB). It ran to many editions over several decades. ESTC: BL, Cambridge, NLI, Bodley and National Trust (Florence Court, Enniskillen, N.I.). No US copies of this edition.

First edition of this attractive book illustrated by Jacynth Parsons. Parsons was a child prodigy, contributing superb illustrations to Ann’s Book by her father, the Arts and Crafts designer Karl Parsons, in 1929. In 1927 the Medici Society put on an exhibition of her ‘Pictures from the age of 3 to 16’ which met with considerable success. She later illustrated an edition of Blake under the patronage of W.B. Yeats, and several other works.