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An attractive manuscript, apparently executed by Jermyn Moorsom (d.1951), brother of Raisley Stuart Moorsom (1892–1981, a member of the Bloomsbury set), and comprising two foxhunting poems by the Victorian MP William Bromley-Davenport.

‘Lowesby Hall’—after Tennyson’s Locksley Hall—is, according to the sporting novelist George Whyte-Melville, ‘the best parody in the English language’.

First edition in French of Dunallan; or, Know what you judge (1825); the last published (but first written) work of this once much-read Presbyterian Scottish novelist (1782-1825). ‘Grace Kennedy's novels (at least eight) were all published anonymously and rapidly in the early 1820s, and met with considerable success, being reissued late into the nineteenth century...’ (Oxford DNB). Worldcat: NLS, Queen’s Public Library (NY) and Penn only outside continental Europe.

Kane O’Hara, Irish playwright (1711/12–1782), born at Templehouse in Connaught. ‘O’Hara’s first professional play was Midas, an English Burletta, which had its première production at the Crow Street Theatre, Dublin, on 22 January 1762. Midas was a clever, chauvinistic response to the success of a touring Italian troupe, the D'Amici family, which had brought a lively production of an Italian burletta to the Smock Alley Theatre on 19 December 1761. The Italian burletta, a slight comic opera already modish on the continent, captivated Dubliners with its simple domestic plot and brisk galante music’ (Oxford DNB). It transferred to London, became a hit and was performed there over 200 times by 1800. O’Hara was seriously shortsighted (he is seen here in spectacles) and lost his sight in 1778.

The etching by Edmund Dorrell (1778-1857) is comparatively rare, the plate apparently having been destroyed soon after it was first printed. This is a splendid example on a full sheet. O’Donoghue 25-II, 1802.

Not found in any of the usual online or printed sources, a delightful juvenile almanac, containing ten moral verses each with a vignette, engraved throughout. Though the publisher Maillard de Bresson produced several other almanacs, and this one is quite typical of the genre, it seems to have eluded bibliographers, including Grand-Carteret. The Journal historique et littéraire (January 1756) gives a useful account of the publisher’s business: ‘M. Maillard de Bressan continue a vendre des caractéres, des desseins & vignettes, des armes à jour, des papiers peints, des sentences, des devises, & forme avec succès la suite de ses fables morales, & instructives pour la jeunesse de l’un et l’autre sexe. It fait des envois auc Communautés Religieuses & à toutes personnes chargées de l’éducation des enfants, ou à des Marchands qui s’adressant à lui. Il demeure actuellement au Collége de Cambray, pres de la rue Saint Jacques, à Paris’.

First edition, Bibliothèque des Chemins de Fer issue (of which it forms part of the second series). A fictional account of the voyage to Sydney, the convict regime, the Australian interior and the gold mines. Merruau’s list of sources includes the ‘Report of the Commissioner of Inquiry into the State of the Colony of New South Wales’ as well as Rowcroft’s Tales of the Colonies and Haygarth’s Bush Life in Australia. Ferguson, 12528 (first issue without adverts or, presumably, the Bibliothèque des Chemins de Fer series title.

Sole edition of this bibliographical catalogue of 210 printed works issued at the time of the Estates General of 1614-15, comprising official documents, memoirs, counsels, petitions, harangues, discussions of the death of Henry IV, arrêts du Parlement, pasquinades and satires. Each entry includes a line or two of commentary. An advisory body representing the three estates in France, the Estates General had met periodically from the middle ages to 1614, which proved to be its last assembly for over 150 years. As France headed towards revolution, the Estates General was summoned as a desperate measure in May 1789 on the model of the 1615 assembly—doubtless the occasion of this rare little bibliography. Conlon, 89, 1275. Though Conlon provides an NUC reference, OCLC lists no US copies. COPAC lists the BL copy only.

First edition of the author’s first two plays. De Belloy began his career as an actor with a company of comédiens touring Northern Europe and found favour at the court of the Empress Elizabeth at St Petersburg. It was there in 1757 that he wrote his first play, then entitled Le Triomphe de l’amitié, which was performed in Paris as Titus on his return in 1761. It was not a success, but de Belloy followed it with Zelmire in 1762 to much greater acclaim. The tale of a princess of the Isle of Lesbos, it was drawn from Metastasio (as was Titus) and was later the source of Rossini’s Zelmira (1822). De Belloy’s major success, Le Siège de Calais followed in 1765.

Sole edition, printed for the author. In verse with English translation in prose, on facing pages. Composed in the aftermath of the Duke’s fatal stabbing on the steps of the Paris Opera by an anti-monarchist Bonapartist, Louis Pierre Louvel. Noel de Quersonnières (1728-1845) formerly commissaire-général of the French armies was reputed to have died at the age of 116, though his dates suggest he only reached 106.

There appear to be two issues: for the English and French market respectively. The first contains a ‘Discours preliminaire’ explaining the translation, with a printed section title to the verso of the title. The second (ours) does not have the section title printed on the title verso and the leaves of the ‘Discours’ are cancelled (hence the apparent mispagination of the prelims in this issue). WorldCat BL, BN and Newberry Library only. The BL copy is of the first issue.

A very rare spurious edition of these erotic and bawdy poems by Burns and his circle, first published in 1799 (of which edition only 2 copies are known to survive). The title-page is headed ‘Not for maids, ministers or striplings’. The Roy collection of Robert Burns contains several similar reprints to ours (including our issue) each with differing title-pages giving ‘1827’.

‘Shepherds I have got the clap,
Stroking of my Anna;
My time’s filled up, oh sad mishap,
With taking salts and senna.
I for her King’s Place forsook,
Where girls I had past telling;
But now my pipe’s turned to a crook,
My b—, how they’re hanging...’ Roy collection of Robert Burns, p. 141 b.

1. NORDENDORF, C.C. de. Attack Step Quickstep. Danville (Va.): Mrs E. L. Nordendorf, [1865]. Not found in OCLC.

2. SCHILLING, Fred[erick]. Brothers hasten on to Battle. Brooklyn: D.S. Holmes, [1864]. OCLC: Lincoln Presidential Library only.

3. DOANE, Howard. Bury me in the Valley. Cincinnati: John Church, [n.d.]. OCLC: Ohio State University only [possibly another edition].

4. MCNAUGHTON, J.H. The faded Coat of Blue or the nameless Grave. Ballad. Buffalo, Penn & Remington, [1865]. Stain to lower margins. OCLC: UC Santa Barbara and Library Company of Philadelphia.

5. CLARK, James C. Fremont’s Battle Hymn. Quartett. Rochester: Joseph P. Shaw, [1863]. Not found in OCLC.

6. PARKHURST, Mrs. E. A. Funeral March, to the Memory of Abraham Lincoln, the Martyr President of the United States of America. New York: Horace Waters, 1865. Advert on final page cropped (with some loss) at foot. Issue without vignette portrait.

7. MACK, E. General McClellan’s Grand March. Philadelphia, Lee & Walker [1861]. Issue without coloured lithograph plate. OCLC: Michigan, Duke, Pennsylvania and Brown Universities.

8. WINNER, Septimus. Give us back our old Commander. Philadelphia, Winner & Co, [1862]. OCLC: LC and Morgan.

9. EASTBURN, The hearty Welcome Home. Philadelphia: Smith, 1865. OCLC: no copies of Smith imprint but 2 of Auner: AAS and NYHS and one of Johnson imprint: NYHS.

10. BECKEL, J. C. Monody on the death of Abraham Lincoln. Sixteenth President of the United States. Born Feb. 12th, 1808, died by the hand of an assassin April 15th, 1865. Philadelphia: Marsh, 1865. OCLC: this issue Lincoln Museum only plus one copy of a Cincinnati imprint of same year at Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.

11. WHEELOCK, O. Richmond Falls, the War is O’er: Philadelphia: March, 1865. No hard copy found in OCLC.

12. CASONELLA. A Song of Peace. New York, W. A. Pond, 1865. OCLC: UPenn, Ocean State, Brigham Young, AAS.

A complete autograph manuscript of one of De Kock’s acutely observed novels of gritty Parisian life. In Le Tourlourou (1837) Marie, a young barmaid, is the object of a strange case of mistaken identity when a letter arrives from a countess seeking ‘l’objet de mes plus chères affections’. Marie assumes the letter refers to her and is thrilled with the possibility of a secret admirer, but when she finds out the Countess is merely asking after an item of lost property, she is distraught and throws herself into the Canal Saint-Martin. She is saved by a young man who has previously tried to gain her affections, and the two are married.
The Oxford Companion to French Literature describes De Kock (1794-1871) as ‘the prolific and immensely popular author of rollicking, risky, or more often frankly coarse, frequently sentimental and fundamentally good-natured novels.’ Certainly prolific, De Kock published over 100 novels, which attained celebrity in translation, especially in American and British editions (of which it has been wryly noted that the prose was much improved by translation). This manuscript certainly gives the impression of rollicking speed in composition — this is not a fair copy, and while there are many deletions and emendations, these seem not to have detained the author for long.

This French adaptation of Machiavelli’s fable Belfagor arcidiavolo (’The Devil takes a Wife’) was probably the version used by La Fontaine for the fable Belphégor he included in the last volume of his Fables (1693). Le Fèvre’s version had first appeared in a very rare edition of 1661 (OCLC lists the Bn de France copy only) and this 1664 edition has Le Fèvre’s version of Plutarch’s Theseus added. The printer and place of publication has been deduced from copies in which it is bound with Le Fèvre’s Les Poètes grecs (also 1664).

Classicist Tanneguy Le Fèvre had been inspector of the Imprimerie royale at the Louvre before his appointment as professor at the protestant Académie at Saumur. He courted controversy with several of his works, judged libertine by his contemporaries, notably his biography of Sappho, in which he desisted from censuring her sexuality. Gay, III, 48, cf. Cioranescu 41672 (1661).

First edition, rare, of this collection of children’s songs. Ludovica Brentano, later baroness Desbordes (1787-1854), affectionately known as Lulu, was grand daughter of Sophie von La Roche (the first widely known German female novelist) and she became patron of the Grimm brothers; contributing two tales to their Kinder- und Hausmärchen. Worldcat: NYPL and Harvard in US, BL in UK.

An elegantly produced autograph manuscript in gold ink of Mesnage’s satire in hexasyllables denouncing the arrivistes of the Second Republic. It is apparently unpublished. Born in 1821 at Evron (Mayenne), Mesnage claimed direct descent from Racine and published several poetical works, including Les Fleurs d’Avril (Laval, 1854 of which a copy is included here).

First published in 1747; Madame de Graffigny’s epistolary novel was a best-seller in numerous early editions. This illustrated version, with the addition of the suite entitled Lettres d’Aza (first published 1748), by Ignace Hugary de Lamache-Courmont, bears an approbation dated 14 September 1759 but was first published in 1752. cf. Cohen-De Ricci 447 (1752 edition).

Prévost’s novel Le doyen de Killerine was first published in 1735 and was frequently reprinted. Set in Ireland, it tells the story of the attempts of a worldly Irish priest’s attempts (usually thwarted) to find suitable marriage partners for his siblings. It is full of romantic anguish, especially in dealing with the thorny question of intermarriage between Protestant and Catholic, and was influential in forming the French taste for ‘celtic’ novels which became so prevalent towards the end of the century and in the next. This copy is an early match of a 1760 edition of volume 1 and 1744 editions of the remainder, with slightly different spine tooling, unified by matching labels (presumably c. 1760). cf. Cioranescu 51276-7 (1735 and 1740 editions).

Second edition (printed in the same year as the first) of her historical novel on the reign of Louis XIII, who she revered for his piety and whose reputation she sought to rehabilitate in France. Cioranescu 30670.

Second edition (first 1779) of Tressan’s free translation, a version which turned the sixteenth-century chivalric romance into a hugely-popular French novel. cf. Cioranescu 62210 (1779 edition).

First edition in Italian of Théis’ popular Voyage de Polyclète (1821) written in the mould of the travels of Anacharsis as an introduction to ancient Roman customs and antiquities.

First edition in French of Carl Engelmanns Tagebuch (1800) from Lafontaines’ Familiengeschichten series (1797-1804), translated by novelist Isabelle de Montolieu. Lafontaine’s didactic tales of domestic life, though now little remembered, were among the most-read German novels of the day. OCLC: Bibliothèque Sainte-Genviève, Indiana and Penn State only.