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A series of anonymous watercolours, with numerous floral borders and vignettes, but also including 20 lovely compositions with books, journals, bundles of letters, music, a writing desk, a watercolour stand, inkwells and pocket books. The style is very much in the Empire taste, and the flower painting is exquisite. The volume appears to have been bound from loose sheets, many of which may have been destined as title pages for some uncompleted album project: a few have tiny marginal notes in ink giving a volume number and several are ruled in pencil for the addition of text.

Many bear the monogram ‘AD’ and some the name Délie, together with dedications ‘À toi’ or ‘À elle’, as though all were in some way dedications to a sweetheart or perhaps a child. There is a slightly morbid air to some, towards the end, which depict tombs, memorials and a deathbed scene. Among other subjects are a billiard room, a pet dog in a basket and two most inviting beds.

A modern manuscript note loosely inserted connects the album to Jules Lardin (1787-71), poet, musician and dilettante. Lardin is known to have created designs for tickets and publicity for concerts and to have made several albums, so this attribution is quite possible. The identity of ‘Délie’ is another question.

A very rare Swiss almanac, including four superb woodcuts and news reports from all over Europe. The Postillion was issued simultaneously in French and German issues: Der Kriegs- und Friedens-Postillion, but both are very rare, recorded in only a handful of copies each of any yearly issue. The woodcut on the first leaf depicts the postillion riding through an emblematic landscape, the three others are: a spectacular sea battle between a French and English ship; the deathbed of Elisabeth II or Russia (folding, c. 185 × 320 mm); and two murders (one from a tragic account from Ireland), each with accompanying descriptions in the text. The news reports have been gleaned from a wide variety of sources. Added them are the familiar elements of an amanac: calendars, astronomical, astrological and meteorological data, with typically charming woodcut vignettes.

First edition in French. A European success, Lafontaine was as popular in France as in his native Germany and the book was evidently read in French in England (copies were imported by De Boffe). The Monthly Review of December 1813 contained the following notice: ‘This novel betrays many incongruities; among which may be reckoned the description of the Dutch naval captain who talks metaphysics, and that of a prudent mother who forbids her daughter’s marriage because the lovers had not sufficient courage to elope. Some of the female characters exhibit an infantine simplicity, which the author seems to have mistaken and substituted for the innocence of youth...’ Worldcat: Yale and Iowa only outside Europe. No UK copies in JISC/COPAC.

First edition. An account of the author’s ‘pilgrimage’ to the Palace of Holyrood in Edinburgh, where French monarch Charles X had taken refuge (for the second time) following his deposition by the July Revolution in 1830. The object of his pilgrimage was not so much Charles himself, but his young nephew Henri, son of the Duke and Duchess de Berri, named regent of French in exile. A detailed report of this extraordinary young man is given, together with the striking lithograph portrait. The ‘Récit’ of the meeting is followed by various reflections on the author’s return journey through London, and then by a ‘rêve’ in which he dreams of a return to Paris and restoration of the monarchy under the young Henri.

First edition. A very rare work, published for the author, La Serrie of the Vendée, who published a series of little books at the opening of the nineteenth century, in small editions for distribution among his friends, with illustrations engraved by himself. These are naive but accomplished and often very striking devotional compositions. They are almost all captioned, almost invariably with the letter ‘N’ in reverse. No copies located in Worldcat.

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 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 prison 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 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 actually 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.

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 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’. Rouveyre was a prolific newspaper caricaturist, moving in some of the most interesting circles of Paris society (including Clifford Barney’s salon) and developing his distinct and pioneering style, poised between minimalism and expressionism.

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.

First and only edition.