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First edition with the Falké illustrations, number 2 of 15 copies only with the woodcuts on chine, numbered and initialled by the artist. A colonialist novel in which a young Senegalese fisherman finds himself enlisted in the army, fighting with the French in the trenches of the Great War. It first appeared in 1922. Fayard’s Livres de demain brought examples of the current revival in woodcut and wood engraving to a wide audience at a reasonable price. Accordingly, the illustrations of the regular volumes were printed in large numbers from phototype metal blocks made from the prints, with just 15 copies of each (as here) presented with an additional suite of the original woodcuts specially printed on fine paper.

An eighteenth-century homemade binding of a portion of a popular literary and satirical miscellany, a reminder that not all reading from perfect copies. The New Foundling Hospital for Wit appeared from 1768-7) and was a vehicle for John Wilkes and his radical bookseller John Almon, each issue audacious satirical engravings. This one includes, as a frontispiece, ‘A Citizen of the World searching for a Wise Prince’ in which blindfolded man walks an empty street carrying a lantern and wearing a long, furred civic gown. On a sign board overhead is a portrait of Augusta, Princess Dowager of Wales and a jackboot, the emblem of the Earl of Bute. Below is a quote from Shakespeare: ‘Who says ‘Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye than twenty of their swords (Romeo and Juliet).

Among the various verses we find Richard Berenger’s ‘On the Birth-Day of Shakespeare’ originally included in The World.

First edition. ‘... born at Calais, author of lively, licentious novels, widely read about 1800 (the favourite reading of Miss Crawley in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair)... During a riotous, dissipated youth this author returned to Calais on one occasion to find that his disgusted father had published notice of his death’ (Oxford Companion to French Literature).

Monsieur Botte was reprinted several times and seems to have found favour in 1803 adapted for the stage as M. Botte; ou, Le négociant anglais comédie en trois actes et en prose, imitée du roman de Pigault-Lebrun by Servières and Sutton de Clonard. The Critical Review describes an English edition of 1804 published by William Lane (of the Minerva Press), but if it was indeed published by Lane, we can find no trace of it in the usual catalogues.

First edition in French of The Banished Man (1794). Smith’s republican sympathies are well-known, but this novel marked a shift in her enthusiasm for the Revolution — it opens in 1792 with the impact of the Revolutionary wars and covers the execution of King Louis XVI in January 1793 as well as the radical period of the Terror. The introduction to Marquand’s translation serves as a retrospective review of Smith’s remarkable popularity in France. Worldcat lists the copy at Illinois as the only copy outside continental Europe. The UK’s Libraryhub (formerly COPAC) adds a copy at Birmingham.

A group reliures japonisantes on a series of Edinburgh-printed ‘Author’s Edition’ copies of these two American authors. This style of binding, with characteristic embossed gilt paper covers in Japanese style became a bibliophilic vogue in the 1880s, reflecting the tremendous enthusiasm for all things Japanese in contemporary Paris. It is most unusual to find them in this context, on a group of popular American titles:

HOLMES, Oliver Wendell. The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 1883. pp. xlviii, 212; 256, (without half-titles) [and] HOWELLS, William D. Their Wedding Journey and A Chance Acquaintance. 1882, pp. 320; 303, [1]; The Undiscovered Country, 1882, pp. 250; 4 pages of ads, 269, [1]; The Lady of Aroostook. 1882, pp. 204 191, [1]; The Rise of Silas Lapham. 1885, pp. 330; 320, [2]; A Forgone Conclusion. A Counterfeit Presentment and The Parlour Car. 1882, pp. 316; 228.

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. 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 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.

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.