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First edition of one of Carus’s pioneering works in the emerging science of psychology. The author’s major contribution was in exploring the psychology of the unconscious and he is considered the precursor of Jung (who acknowleged his debt to Carus) in this field. The author was a prolific figure who wrote on many aspects of psychology, medicine and philosophy. He was an accomplished landscape artist in the Romantic tradition and had studied under Caspar David Friedrich. He was also a friend of Nietzsche, Humboldt and Goethe.

The Vorlesungen über Psychologie is especially notable for its wide frame of reference outside the discipline of medicine. Many of Carus’s examples are drawn from literature, with a special emphasis on the works of Shakespeare: in the course of his argument he refers variously to Hamlet, Macbeth, Henry IV, Romeo and Juliet and Othello. OCLC lists the National Library of Medicine copy only outside Europe.

An expanded version of Maddison’s Englands looking in and out (1640). Maddison, a forward looking and enterprising landlord was a vocal advocate for the regulation of the money markets, arguing that foreign exchangers and unscrupulous merchants had devalued the currency for personal gain. He developed his ideas in the work above mentioned to include the demand that an accurate account be kept and made available of the balance of trade. “In 1655 he published an updated version of his 1640 tract entitled Great Britain's remembrancer, looking in and out; tending to the increase of the monies of the Commonwealth. Presented to his highness the lord protector and to the high court of parliament now assembled (1655). His recent experience of office can account for new calls for a bank, a council for the mint, and free ports, but his general economic views remained unchanged” (ODNB). Wing M245.

The eighteenth annual report of the Liverpool Catholic Blind Asylum for children (for the year 1862). Includes also the rules and regulations for the government of the Asylum, founded in 1841 by the very reverend Dr Thomas Youens. Evidently scarce with Worldcat and COPAC listing no copies of this or of reports for other years.

A very rare set of Friendly Society regulations, with additonal evidence of their operation in the form of slips and notes of payment to a member. Though the history of this form of co-operative insurance goes back to early times it is considered to have formally begun in England with the Acts encouraging their formation of the late eighteenth-century. Thousands of such societies sprang up at the opening of the nineteenth century. Though initially encouraged, they were also viewed with suspicion in some quarters as hot-beds of political sedition. The Macclesfield rules are notable in this respect, being insistent on the exclusion of all topics of political or religious dispute in meetings, anyone contravening was to be either fined or expelled. Not in COPAC or the BL catalogue.

First edition of this pamphlet subscribed ‘a burgher of Edinburgh’ charging the chairman of the Scottish Convention of Delegates with having allowed the electoral principles of the Society of Friends to become confused with the far more radical and un-parliamentary politics of Thomas Paine. Scarce.

First edition of a rather reactionary consideration of Paine’s republicanism which includes notice of the earlier critique by John Quincy Adams. A second edition appeared later in the same year. Hardy was a Scottish cleric, not to be confused with the radical Thomas Hardy, founder of the London Corresponding Society. Their positions cannot have been much farther apart. Sabin 59081.

First edition, containing historical, topographical and contemporary accounts of the city’s religious, civic, educational and cultural buildings and institutions in the early nineteenth century and before.

‘Mackenzie was a strong radical, a secretary of the Northern Political Union, and the leading founder of the Newcastle Mechanics' Institute in 1824. His publications (all from Newcastle) contain much statistical information aimed at providing grounds for local self-improvement. They include An Historical and Descriptive View of the County of Northumberland (2 vols., 1811, revised as ‘historical, topographical and descriptive’ to 2 vols. quarto, 1825); A Descriptive and Historical Account of the Town and County of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (2 vols., 1827); and An Historical, Topographical and Descriptive View of the County Palatine of Durham (1834), which had been completed after Mackenzie's death by Metcalf Ross’ (Oxford DNB).

The Mémoires are the principal source for the political, economic, military and legal history of the reign of Henry IV (“le Grand”), compiled by the king’s most able and most trusted minister. Henry’s reign marked the rehabilitation of France’s fortunes after the near-disintegration of the country during the Wars of Religion. Sully’s collection represents a very immediate account of the period between 1570 and 1628, including episodes such as Henry’s conversion to Catholicism (arguably a political expediency urged by Sully himself, who remained Protestant); the Edict of Nantes (which promised religious toleration for the Huguenots); negotiations with the English crown (both Elizabeth and James I); and war with Spain (in alliance with England). Sully’s own contrubution to the state is amply recorded - he is remembered for his reorganisation of the country’s finances and system of office-holding as well as for his engineering projects (the Place Royale and the Briare Canal linking Seine and Loire being the best known). The Mémoires are historiographically advanced and include both critical narrative and a large number of transcribed diplomatic material. They have, however, been criticized for partiality and for containing “many fictions, such as a mission undertaken by Sully to Queen Elizabeth in 1601, and the famous ‘Grand Design,’ a plan for a Christian republic [or a United States of Europe], which some historians have taken seriously” (Ency. Brit, 1911).

The work was completed posthumously by a second volume (present here) under the editorship of J. Le Laboureur. The bibliography of this work has been contentious. For a long time, our edition with the coloured frontispieces was accepted as the first, published with a false imprint at the Chateau de Sully itself. It is now clear that there were actually as many as 3 issues bearing versions of these title pages: the exceptionally rare true first edition printed under Sully’s eye (with a different collation to ours); our swiftly-produced contrefaçon of the same year, and one other pirate edition. Complete sets of any edition are rare. Brunet V, 589-90; Cioranesco 63703.

First edition of Brougham’s famous six-hour speech (still the longest in the history of the House of Commons, though not then described as a ‘filibister’) which set in motion the long-overdue reform of the British legal system. In the course of the speech ‘he exposed flaws in virtually every area of law (omitting only chancery reform and the criminal law) and staked his claim to be parliament’s prime champion of law reform. Brougham’s speech struck the perfect note. He showed himself to be committed to a widescale reform of the legal system, while resisting Bentham’s iconoclasm. In preparing the speech he had in fact received much guidance (and many manuscripts) from Bentham, who still considered Brougham as the man best placed... to advance his projects for codification and the abolition of the common law’ (Oxford DNB).

Though the recipient’s name has been erased, this copy has a presentation inscription by Elizabeth Vassall Fox, Lady Holland, literary and political hostess. It provides an interesting sidelight on her political sympathies.

First edition. Essays on the Superstitions of the Highlanders found favour among readers with a taste for the poetry of Burns and Scot, as well as among Romantics who looked to the Scottish Highlands for evidence of a society uncorrupted by the vices of modern society. Anne Grant was born in Glasgow, but spent her childhood in America and is best known for her Memoirs of an American Lady (1808).