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First edition of this very rare and notorious catalogue for the sale of the library of the comte de Fortsas in Mons, 1840. In that year, booksellers, librarians and collectors were surprised to receive copies of a sale catalogue for a remarkable library, containing just 52 books, each purporting to be a work or edition existing in a single copy only. The catalogue introduction explains that the comte collected only these otherwise unrecorded books and that if he subsequently found reference to any in bibliographies and catalogues he would deaccession them by selling, donation or even destruction. There are also helpful annotations to some lots from the comte’s own notes and some condition statements.

Converging on the small town of Binche on August 10th, hopeful bidders were surprised to find the notary’s office in which the sale was to be held did not actually exist and later, to learn that there was no library of unique books, and no comte de Fortsas. The hoax had been perpetrated by Renier Hubert Ghislain Chalon, an antiquarian who enjoyed playing elaborate pranks on intellectuals. This copy also contains the exceptionally rare ‘Avis’ sheet (officially stamped) bound at the end - the notice issued by Chalon stating that the sale was cancelled and that the books had been acquired en bloc by the public library of the town of Binche.

132 copies only of the catalogue were printed, and 73 copies of the Avis. It was reprinted very quickly, but the first edition is very rare and is recognised by the word ‘rue’ as the first word of the eighth line on the title (the earliest reprint has that word at the end of the line above): W. Klinefelter, The Fortsas Bibliohoax (1941)

First edition. A panegyric addressed to Marie Adélaïde, ‘Madame’ (1732-1800, the fourth of Louis XV’s eight daughters) on the subject of her patron, Saint Adelaide of Burgundy, Holy Roman Empress by marriage to the tenth-century Emperor Otto the Great. The author, Abbé Petity, was a court cleric and had been royal predicateur to Adélaïde’s mother, Marie Leszczyńska. Worldcat: University of Aberdeen only outside France.

First edition. A homage to Rousseau in the form of a series of imaginary visits to his monument on the Isle des Peupliers in the gardens of Ermenonville which had been constructed by the philosopher’s patron, the Marquis de Girardin. Lepetit’s adverts on 6 pages at the end are of interest and include several translations from gothic novels in English (Anne Radcliffe, Eléonor de Rosalba, ou le Confessionnal des Pénitens Noirs; Miss Bennett, Rosa, ou la Fille Mendiante and Sophie Lee, Le Soutterrain, ou Matilde). Worldcat: Cambridge, Dumbarton Oaks, Illinois and Princeton only outside continental Europe.

First edition in French of An authentic Account of Forgeries and Frauds of various kinds, committed by Charles Price, otherwise Patch or (alternatively) Memoirs of a Social Monster (1786), a sensational work which had run to six English editions within a year. Price, a highly successful forger of banknotes and a confidence trickster, notorious for engraving his own very plausible banknotes printed on paper of his own manufacture complete with watermarks, became something of a celebrity in eighteenth century London. He took his own life in Bridewell in 1786 and was the subject of numerous popular memoirs and ballads. Rochedieu, p. 368. Worldcat: Cambridge, Leeds, University of London, V & A, Cornell, UCLA and Yale outside continental Europe. Rochedieu, p. 368.

First published in 1778, this important Lakeland guide had reached no less than 11 editions by 1821. Its picturesque vision was hugely influential and can be credited, at least in part, with establishing the Romantics’ interest in the Lakes. ‘Drawing freely on the work of previous writers, notably Thomas Gray, Thomas Pennant, and John Brown, and very much reflecting the contemporary interest in what West himself calls ‘landscape studies’, the Guide is nevertheless a work of considerable individuality, displaying a real sensitivity to the visual qualities of the district. The recommended 'stations' for viewing the landscape were a significant innovation. The author's antiquarian passion and his curiosity about industrial activities are clearly evident. The Guide undoubtedly did much to popularize the district (Oxford DNB).

First published anonymously in May 1744, Moore’s Fables for the Female Sex had at least seventeen other editions in the eighteenth century, four of which were American; it was translated into French in 1764 and German in 1772. Three of the fables are by Henry Brooke. Hayman’s illustrations incorporate numerous elements from Francis Barlow’s sequence of the previous century; his original drawings of 1744 are preserved in the Rothschild collections at Waddesdon. Foxon, M428.

The Supernatural Philosopher is a reissue of The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell (1720) with the addition of ‘Verses to Mr. Campbell. On the History of his Life and Adventures’ and ‘A remarkable passage of an apparition. 1665’.
The author evidently lodged for a while in the same London house as the Scots-born soothsayer Duncan Campbell (d. 1730), who was a well-known figure in the city. Deaf and mute, he was probably educated at Glasgow using the finger system devised by John Wallis in the seventeenth century. The History of the Life was persistently attributed until relatively recently to Defoe even though it was reissued here under Bond’s name.

First edition of this defence of Rousseau by a Genevan republican patriot, who includes numerous long extracts from Rousseau’s letters, which appear to have been otherwise unpublished. ESTC: Göttingen, Polish Academy of Sciences Library, Wisconsin and Western Michigan University only (there is also a copy at Cambridge). Conlon 548.

An unpublished French translation of Wheaton’s influential History of the Northmen (1831) by Emma Chuppin de Germigny (1809?-1852). History of the Northmen is notable as the first book in English to claim that America had been discovered by the Norse before the voyage of Columbus.

The translator Emma Chuppin de Germigny was the daughter of a noble emigré settled in Normandy after the Revolution. A long biographical entry in the Mémoires of the Caen Académie recounts her life: her family’s reduced circumstances necessitated her work as a schoolmistress in Caen, during which time she produced a series of scholarly works (including the Wheaton translation). She published a history of music in Normandy from the ninth century to her own day (1836) and an account of the Bayeux Tapestry (1846). Her translation of Wheaton’s work was not published, though the form of this manuscript, and Emma’s circumstances, strongly suggests it was intended to be. It is almost certainly in her autograph, with occasional corrections. In the event, a French edition by Paul Guillot, with numerous additional apparatus, appeared at Paris in 1844.

Wheaton, a native of Providence, Rhode Island and an alumnus of Brown University was prominent as a lawyer, diplomat and antiquarian. His research into Scandinavian history began with his appointment to Denmark as chargé d’affaires in 1827.

First edition. The collection is mostly juvenile and is introduced with the poem ‘Adieu to Harrow’. The delightful plates are by Isaac Cruikshank, father of George. Jackson, p. 204.

First edition, the first published work of Marga Gil Roësset (b. 1908) then aged twelve. Marga’s talent was astonishingly precocious, and her compositions for this fairy tale by her sister, Consuelo, combine vestiges of a distinctive Spanish art nouveau with a troubling, dreamlike quality entirely her own. Born into a cultivated and talented family, she became dangerously ill as a child, manifestly influencing some of these extraordinary illustrations. She published further illustrations before becoming a sculptor and exhibiting at the Esposizione Nazionale di Belle Arti a Madrid in 1932 as one of the most promising artists of her generation. She had, however, become infatuated with the poet Juan Ramón Jiménez (who was married) and committed suicide in 1932, having destroyed most of her work and presented her manuscript diary to Jiménez on the day of her death (it has recently been published). Worldcat: Princeton and Spanish Ministry of Education only.

First edition, scarce, of this compilation of romantic poems by Lydia Bosworth Smith (1808-1876), of Dorset.
Although it is unlikely that Smith travelled on the Iberian peninsula, ‘The Songs of Granada and the Alhambra’ is a striking paean to Al-Andalus. The poems describe incidents in the conflict between the semi-mythical Zegrí dynasty and Christian soldiers, yet from a sympathetic Moorish perspective. Ill-fated love affairs (often between beautiful Moorish women and gallant Christian knights) make up much of the material here, but are underscored with a real topographical understanding of Southern Spain; Smith’s romantic figures populate locations within the Alhambra complex, such as the Generalife, Gate of Elvira and the Tower of the Seven Floors. Indeed, her notes reveal a remarkable breadth of reading around the topography and history of southern Spain.
The other poems in the volume continue the Romantic strain across a range of topics, and geographically from Venice to the reaches of the Norman empire. Smith was the daughter of Sir John Wyldbore Smith and Elizabeth Anne Marriott, and was raised at the Smith-Marriott baronetcy’s ancestral seat of Down House, Dorset, from whence she signs the present work. COPAC records six copies, at the British Library, Bodley, Cambridge, Aberdeen Glasgow, St Andrews. Not in Jackson, nor Jackson, Women.

First edition of Crebillon’s five-act adaptation from Sophocles, this copy annotated with contemporary deletions, corrections and other markings, presumably for performance. There are markings on some 40 pages, ranging from simple crosses or other marks to deletions of short passages and occasional comments: ‘on ne pas cela’ or ‘jusque icy’, all suggesting an actor’s or prompt copy.

Electre was one of Crébillon père’s great early successes, performed for the first time at the Comédie-Française on 14 December 1708, subsequently causing a quarrel with Voltaire, who wrote his own version and disparaged Crebillon’s. In spite of Crebillon’s early celebrity, he famously retreated to a garret around 1711, in a long episode of misanthropy accompanied by his dogs, cats and pet crows before his rehabilitation under the patronage of Madame de Pompadour and the Académie Française. Cioranescu I, 21658. Worldcat: Cambridge, Harvard and Thomas Fisher Library (Toronto) only outside France.

A movie-enthusiast’s notebooks - filled with striking coloured portraits of male characters in films popular in the Netherlands, including Dutch-language versions of The Thirteenth Chair (1929 film); Madame Sans-gêne (1925 film); Maria Stuart (1927); The Trial of Mary Dugan (1931); Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan, Shaw’s How He Lied to Her Husband; Jonson’s Volpone; Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, King Lear and Macbeth. The anonymous albums are numbered in pencil, suggesting they were part of a larger group.

First edition, inscribed: ‘À Miss Natalie Clifford Barney, imperturbable, André Rouveyre’,

A poem of nine four-line verses with a footnote giving a brief description of Robert Levet (?1701-82), a native of Hull, and a self-taught physician who for many years had resided with Johnson. Courtney (p. 156) lists only the versions of the poem published in the Gentleman’s Magazine (August 1793) and in the London Magazine (September 1793). The authorised edition was probably the former, making the British Magazine version the first of several piracies.

First and only edition. The poet Henry Headley (1765–1788) matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford in 1782, and immediately became close to the poet William Bowles, and William Benwell, the classicist (Oxford DNB). Around this time, while visiting friends in Norfolk, he fell deeply in love with a woman named Myra (i.e., of the poem ‘To Myra’ in the present volume), but was left heartbroken after she had been ‘prevailed on to marry a rival … He quitted Oxford in 1785, it is said in an agony of disappointment, and without any communication with his friends’ (ibid.). This highly emotional incident prompted him to hastily and anonymously publish his book of poetry, Fugitive Pieces (1785), containing poems he had written at the age of nineteen, and ‘had previously appeared in print. They were reissued with additions in 1786 as Poems and Other Pieces by Henry Headley [the present volume], and the book was inscribed to Dr P—r (Parr). These poems were subsequently included in R. A. Davenport’s British Poets (vol. 73) and in Park’s Poets (vol. 41)’ (ibid.). The present work, he tells the reader, was conceived in a moment of regret for originally publishing many of the poems so hastily with errors: ‘The majority of the following Pieces, which have been before much too hastily, and perhaps undeservedly, made public, are here collected and republished, solely for the sake of correcting many of their imperfections, and of rendering them (if possible) somewhat less exceptionable’ (‘To the Reader’). Jackson, p. 126.

First editions. ‘In 1819 Luttrell published some graceful, if rather colourless, elegiacs entitled Lines Written at Ampthill Park in the Autumn of 1818, and dedicated to Henry, Lord Holland’ (Oxford DNB). Rogers’s Human Life has been compared to Byron: ‘Detailing various scenes from cradle to grave in the life of a gentleman from a background similar to Rogers’s own, the poem gave Rogers the opportunity to confront his own sufferings in a vicarious form. He never married, and there is a wistfulness in the delineation of domestic scenes’. (Oxford DNB). Jackson, p. 444.

First edition. A scarce provincial tribute to Wellington, the subscribers list consisting almost entirely of Northumberland names, in Sunderland, Monkwearmouth and Bishopwearmouth. Worldcat: Stanford and Indiana only in US. Jackson, p. 390; Johnson 846.

First edition. An ambitious Miltonesque account of the last battle and the end of the world with an imperial twist, describing Christian Britannia’s rule over the infidel kingdoms among the preconditions for the attainment of the millennium. Written while Townsend was still at Trinity College, Cambridge, p. 60* bears an additional dedication to the reverend G.F. Tavel, late fellow and tutor of the college. This copy, in its elaborate binding (now in indifferent condition) is a presentation copy, with an autograph letter from Townsend to Lord Eldon seeking patronage: ‘I submit it as proof of industry, and as the first effort of a young clergyman, who, with a rising family, has only his exertion to rely on, for support, and advancement in his profession’. Jackson, p. 390.