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First edition. Following The Borough in Crabbe’s output, these 21 Tales in verse are arguably his masterpiece and were warmly received by his admirers. ‘Several of Crabbe’s favourite themes are explored in multiple tales: exile and return, radicals and libertines as forces of social destruction, social inequality, and love and courtship’ (Oxford DNB).. Jackson, p. 364.

Sole edition of verse by a Liverpool poet, the son of actor Charles Lee Lewes. The poems are on contemporary patriotic themes (Nelson and Napoleon are frequent subjects) and some are in Irish and Scottish mode. Among the latter, the long poem Wallace (with notes) occupies the final 50 pages, and is the subject of the unsigned wood engraved frontispiece. Johnson 533; not in Jackson.

FIRST AND ONLY EDITION of a provincial poem in four cantos aiming ‘To reward virtue and discourage vice’ (p. x) through its portrayal of the steadfast Angela, who earns herself a life of domestic felicity by being ‘an example to the sex, that true virtue is able to surmount all obstacles’ (p. xx). A quick read this poem is not, but do not fear, for as the author states in his preface, ‘the dull passages, may, by their contrast, heighten, and serve as a sort of foil to the more interesting ones!’ (p. xii). The preface, like the poem itself, does a great deal of moralizing, including a section condemning suicide (‘How weak—how mad! When a few short years,--a very few days,--nay, even moments, might summon him into the Awful Presence by a messenger from on high!’, p. xiv) and another praising women, though he makes sure to temper his admiration by reminding women their place (‘To the policy of a state, the female sex is in no small degree indebted’, p. xvi).

We have been able to find only one other poem by the author, ‘The Angler’, listed in a July 1819 issue of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, though we have been unable to locate any copies institutionally, in auction records, or on the market. Not in Jackson or Johnson.

First edition of this collection of verse by the young tutor to Edward Jenner’s children, which also contains journal extracts, together with addresses and verses on the benefits of vaccination. Worgan (1790-1809) was ‘a consumptive boy of precocious ability whom Jenner took into his household, nominally as a tutor to his sons.’ Jackson, p. 344.

First and only edition of a book of poems that the author ‘never would have published’ had it not been ‘in compliance with the wishes of many of his friends, relying on whose superior judgment, he launches his little volume, with all its defects, into the world; if it contributes any thing in a harmless way to the amusements of a winter’s evening, it is the extent of the author’s ambition, and the end for which any thing of his was originally composed’ (Preface). Included are several poems about Burns and a number of poems reflecting on the poet’s everyday life, including a ‘Song when the Author was Librarian to the Dalkeith Subscription Library’.

First collected edition, including odes to Walter Scott, Grimaldi, Kemble, Godwin, and Cobbett. Brothers James (1775–1839) and Horace (born Horatio, 1779–1849) Smith made their name as writers and humourists, and ‘shared a taste for wit, theatre, fashionable entertainments, and light verse. Horace Smith’s first literary ventures were novels of contemporary manners, characterised by lively dialogue … [both] contributed regularly to Hill’s Monthly Mirror, from 1807 to 1819, to William Combe’s short-lived magazine The Pic-Nic, and wrote several prefaces to plays in Cumberland’s new edition of Bell's British Theatre’ (Oxford DNB). The present edition was published by Millar to capitalise on the lasting success of the brothers’ highly popular parody Rejected Addresses (first published 1809), and contains poems mainly penned by James that appeared in Hill’s Monthly Mirror. A second volume was ostensibly planned but never published, so far as we can trace.

John Keats writes the following character sketch of the two brothers in a 23 January 1818 letter describing a dinner out: ‘They only served to convince me how superior humour is to wit, in respect to enjoyment. These men say things which make one start, without making one feel; they are all alike; their manners are alike; they all know fashionables; they have all a mannerism in their very eating and drinking, in their mere handling of a decanter.’ Jackson, p. 368.

First edition, posthumously published, this copy with a fitting provenance, from the library of the Chateau de Cirey. Helvétius had been encouraged in his philosophy by Voltaire, who sent him a copy of his work on Newton and invited him to stay at the Chateau de Cirey. The inscription, though abbreviated is almost certainly that of Diane-Adelaide de Simiane, herself an important literary figure. Her early life was colourful and she came to Cirey in 1795 after a period of incarceration during the Terror. Prior to that she had been married to Charles-François de Simiane, who had served with Lafayette in America and who died in France in 1787. The death was publicly explained as a hunting accident, but the circumstances were mysteriousl and suggest suicide; Charles-François was almost certainly homosexual and his wife Diane-Adélaïde had pursued a long affair with Lafayette in the 1780s. After her husband’s death madame de Simiane never remarried. She amassed a fine library at Cirey.

The introductory biography is by Saint-Lambert. Since the outcry over his De l’Ésprit (1758), Helvétius’ works were all condemned and issued in clandestine editions, usually outside France. Even after his death Le Bonheur was printed in Germany, with a false Londres imprint. The work is listed in Darnton’s, Corpus of Clandestine Literature in France 1769-89, 64. Several editions followed this one, including two others of the same year and the same imprint, but with the title printed in black and/or a different pagination. The first edition is rare. Smith, Bibliography of the writing of Helvétius, B.1; Higgs, Bibliography of Economics, 1751-1775, 5624; Tchemerzine VI, 190a (title pages illustrated).

Popular music in the reign of Louis XIV. A rare yearly part of the Livres d’Airs de differents autheurs, published annually between 1658 and 1694 and containing the most popular airs of the year, circulated otherwise either orally or in fugitive form (manuscript or print). Most of the songs are in two or three parts arranged across a double-page opening. RISM Recueils, p. 560, 1679 3; Goulet, Poésie, musique et sociabilité au XVIIe siècle. Les livres d’airs de différents auteurs publiés chez Ballard de 1658 à 1694, Paris: Honoré Champion, 2004.

First edition, a powerful evangelical sermon on the text: ‘He that winneth souls is wise’ (Proverbs XI, v. 30). Slave trader and evangelical clergyman of Olney Hymns (’Amazing Grace’) fame, Newton had become rector of the City church of St Mary Woolnoth in 1780, where his sermons attracted enormous congregations. 1788 was also the year in which he published Thoughts Upon the Slave Trade and in which his best-known portrait, by John Russell, was painted.

A very neat collection of popular songs, most from the 1850s, of the sort circulated in ephemeral printed and manuscript song sheets. Highlights include: Est-ce le hatchich qui t’a mis comme ça: an uncommon reference to hashish in this context, and a song (in common with several others in the manuscript) for which we can find no printed source. Sung to the tune of ‘Aÿ chiquita’, this is a woman’s complaint to her suitor, with the chorus:

‘Est-ce l’absinthe, ou bien encore,
Le hatchich qui t’as mis, dis-moi,
Dans cet état que j’aborre,
Et tu veux m’aimer! Ah! Tais-toi.’

This is hardly Baudelaire, but a pleasing contemporary parallel to Les Paradis artificiels.

Others include Les Cris de Paris, Les Chemins de fer and Les Anges de la charité ou les inondés de 1856 and there are songs attributable to Pierre Dupont and Charles Durand, both popular in the 1850s and 60s. Some are in dialect and typically, the subjects tend towards love, drink and gastronomy, but there are also a couple alluding to the language of flowers. The compilation is scrupulously neat—and is presumably, in part, an exercise in penmanship.

An illustrated chansonnier, highly decorated, and including songs such as: Souvenir de ‘70, Les Femmes soldats, Le Baiser, l’Anglaise, Le Testament du Libre-Penseur, Marche du Bataillon d’Afrique, L’Africaine, Départ pour Madagascar, La Pucelle de Bellville, Les Prisonniers morts pour la liberté.

These notebooks are a fascinating example of a popular method of collecting popular French cabaret songs, all neatly copied up with headings and illustrations (usually suitably suggestive) copied from contemporary song sheets (an example of one of these loose sheets is loosely inserted). We have seen several similar examples, in which the illustrations are apparently traced using carbon paper from printed (or other manuscripts) exemplars. Their context is usually military or naval and they represent a significant form of popular or naive art.

The decorative title, with elaborate borders describes Arbez Carme as ‘employé au Magasin des Vivres de Réserve du 23me Reg[im]ent d’Inf[anter]ie a Bourg, Ain’. Military records record his birth in 1876 in Jura, his occupation as a perruquier (wigmaker) and his recruitment in 1896.

Sole edition of the first published work on grouse shooting. It was well known to Wordsworth, who quoted it in his poem An Evening Walk. Jackson, p. 133; Schwerdt I, p. 218 (‘Exceedingly Rare’); ESTC: Brighton Central Library, BL, Cambridge (UL and St John’s), Longleat, Bodley, NT (Dunham Massey), Huntington, Princeton, UC Berkeley and Yale.

Morison’s pocket edition of Dunbar commences with a Life of Gavin Douglas, from a manuscript then in the possession of the Literary and Antqiuarian Society of Perth. Not in Jackson or Johnson.

First edition in French of this translation (mainly in prose) of Scott’s narrative poem The Lady of the Lake (1810) which also contains Les Fiançailles de Trierman, a prose translation of Scott’s poem The Bridal of Trierman. It is by Amedée Pichot, and was preceded by a novelised treatment of the poem by Elisabeth le Bon (1813). Pichot is a significant figure in the translation of English works into French―in the course of his long career he translated Byron, Dickens, Sheridan, Thackeray and Lytton. The first volume contains a publisher’s statement disavowing a spurious work entitled Le Chateau de Pontefract which had recently appeared in Paris under Scott’s name. In common with most of the Scott titles first published in French in the 1820s, the first edition of La Dame du Lac was to form part of the grwoing ‘complete works’ series and contains half-titles marked Oeuvres complètes Rare: Worldcat lists copies at Texas only outside continental Europe. Jisc/Libraryhub (formerly COPAC) locates no British copies.

First edition in French of ‘the most influential’ of all Scott’s novels in France (Dargan), the tale of a Scottish archer in the service of the French King Louis XI (1423–1483). Issued separately, it also formed vols 69-72 of Oeuvres complètes de Walter Scott. Scott experience uncommon success in France, where his novels inspired a host of romantic and medievalist admirers (Hugo, Delavigne and Balzac among them). Quentin Durward, in particular, helped rekindle among novelists an interest in French history and the era of Louis XI, and Scott’s gothicism is rightly credited as one of the origins of a movement for the conservation and restoration of French national monuments culminating in the work of Viollet-le-duc.

The translations (usually by Defaucompret) were approved by Scott and appeared almost simultaneously with the British editions, with Cadell delivering advance sheets to the French publishers. E. Preston Dargan, ‘Scott and the French Romantics’, PMLA, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Jun 1934), 17 (May 31) and p. 605 ff.; Garside, Raven and Schöwerling, The English Novel 1770-1829, 1823: 74. For all their celebrity, the French editions are rare aoutside Europe: OCLC lists copies at NLS, Aberdeen and University of Toronto only outside continental Europe.

First edition of this patriotic poem on the Battle of Bussaco, 1810, in which the French were defeated by Anglo-Portuguese forces under Wellington (to whom the poem is dedicated). ‘The following poem was suggested by an evenings excursion, during the Autumn of 1810, upon the hills of Cintra, in which spot indeed many of the lines themselves were written’. George Grenville (1788-1850) of Carlanstown, Co. Westmeath became lord high commissioner of the Ionian Islands and was prominent in the cause of anti-slavery, parliamentary reform, and religious liberty. Jackson, Annals of English Verse, p. 362.

First edition. Edward Burnaby Greene (d. 1788) was variously a poet, translator, brewer and bibliophile. In 1765 he produced The Laureate, a poem in which Samuel Johnson was extensively abused. He was a prolific translator from the classics, though his version were rarely praised. One critic in 1782 remarked that ‘Greene's versions of Pindar, Anacreon, and Juvenal.. may all be seen “at Mr Brich's Pastryshop (late Horton's) opposite the Royal Exchange, and at all the principal Cheesemongers in London and Westminster”’ (cited in the Oxford DNB).

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).

A collection of finely-executed miniatures reproducing in colour sixteenth-century printer’s ornaments and initials: 39 selected initials, three tailpieces, one headpiece and one printer’s device (Giunta, dated on verso 1567). Some are signed, minutely, ‘A. Baudon’ who we have been unable to trace. The artist has copied, in remarkable detail, these metalcut ornaments, reproducing in many cases the speckled backgrounds typical of punched or ‘criblé’ designs.