English Books & Manuscripts
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ENGLISH BOOKS & MANUSCRIPTS QUARITCH 1433 BERNARD QUARITCH LTD 40 SOUTH AUDLEY ST, LONDON W1K 2PR Tel: +44 (0)20-7297 4888 Fax: +44 (0)20-7297 4866 e-mail: [email protected] web site: www.quaritch.com Bankers: Barclays Bank plc, 50 Pall Mall, P.O. Box 15162, London SW1A 1QB Sort code: 20-65-82 Swift code: BARCGB22 Sterling account: IBAN: GB98 BARC 206582 10511722 Euro account: IBAN: GB30 BARC 206582 45447011 U.S. Dollar account: IBAN: GB46 BARC 206582 63992444 VAT number: GB 840 1358 54 Mastercard, Visa, and American Express accepted Recent Catalogues: 1432 Continental Books 1431 Travel and Exploration, Natural History 1430 Philosophy, Politics, Economics 1429 Continental Books 1428 In the Scribe’s Hand, Islamic Manuscripts Cover images taken from item 58, Pleasant and Instructive History © Bernard Quaritch 2015 ENGLISH BOOKS & MANUSCRIPTS ASHE, ‘THE CLAUSTRAL PALACE’ (1811-4) BARCLAY, BREWERY NOTES 1781-98 MANUSCRIPT ‘CATALOGUE OF BOOKS’ AT LUND, 1676 HALLAM, REMAINS (1834), WITH AN AUTOGRAPH POEM HAMOND, A PARADOX (1640) AND MADAGASCAR (1643) LAND TAX ASSESSMENTS FOR MAYFAIR, 9 MS VOLS, 1746-7 ABOLITIONIST NEW RHYMES FOR CHILDREN (1790) POWERSCOURT AND THE PLYMOUTH BRETHREN, 1831 SMITH, DRAFTS OF GUINEA WITH MS ADDITIONS, 1728 UNRECORDED BOOKS, JOHNSONIANA JUVENILES, NOVELS, FABLES, POETRY BERNARD QUARITCH CATALOGUE 1433 MMXV [61, PSALTER] 1 AIKIN, Dr [John]. Filial Duty, an interesting Tale … Plym[outh] Dock, Printed by J. Heydon … [c. 1795]. 8vo., pp. [8], untrimmed (printed on a folio sheet, folded twice, and fastened with a pin), the cheap paper a bit limp. £275 Unrecorded chapbook, the sole edition in this form, and apparently not one of the stories from Aikin’s Evenings at Home; or, the juvenile Budget opened , 1792-6. Part of the imprint takes the form of a woodcut vignette reading ‘Plym Dock’. Young Charles Hastings, the son of a country tradesman, a rebellious youth turned out by his father at the age of fifteen, seeks his fortune in India. Taken up by a wealthy merchant in Madras, he advances from office work to managing a trading post of some consequence, and begins ‘to make a fortune with a rapidity peculiar to that country’. Presently his heart softens towards his father, and longing to see his family again, he books a passage home, where he finds his family in much distress from a change of fortune. After many tender greetings, happily reconciled with his father, and pleased that he is able to help with his Indian riches, he sets out on a new mercantile career. Not in ESTC, COPAC or OCLC. 2 AINSWORTH, William Henry. Chetwynd Calverley. A Tale … in three Volumes … London: Tinsley Brothers … 1876. 3 vols., 8vo., a very good copy in the publisher’s original slate-grey cloth binding, covers and spine blocked in black, spine lettered in gilt. £400 First edition of a country house novel set in Cheshire, the plot centred on the poisoning of Chetwynd’s father by his young step-mother. Intrigues over a will and the subsequent unsuccessful attempt to poison Chetwynd’s sister add to the mystery until the penitent murderer commits suicide. Ainsworth’s historical romances, many of them set in his native Lancashire, had once rivalled Dickens in popularity, but by the 1870s his reputation was on the wane. In 1872 he moved from Chapman & Hall to Tinsley Brothers, often the publisher of last resort. The decline in sales mean that some of his later novels have become very scarce, but in this case the plot prefigured one of the sensations of the year, the ‘Balham Mystery’ surrounding the death of Charles Bravo, providing an unexpected opportunity for Tinsley to promote the book. Sadleir 5; Wolff 41. 3 [ALMANAC.] GOLDSMITH, John. Goldsmith, 1688. An Almanack for the Year of Lord God 1688. Being Leap-Year, wherein are contained many necessary Rules and useful Tables. With a Description of the High-ways, Marts and Fairs in England and Wales …. To which are added Divers Tables and other useful Things which have not been in former Edit. London: Printed by Mary Clark … 1688. Narrow 24mo., pp. [48], the calendar (A1v-B1r) interleaved with blanks; title-page and calendar printed in red and black; woodcut illustrations of the zodiacal body and a manual sundial; a very good copy in a contemporary wallet bi nding of stiff vellum, brass clasps; annotated at the front with the dates of birth of various members of the Amhurst family 1736-50. £950 John Goldsmith’ s very successful Almanack first began appearing in the 1650s and continued under his name throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, his predictions largely confined to the weather. Goldsmith had various publishers, with Mary Clark succeeding her late husband Andrew Clark in the late 1670s and continuing until the turn of the century. The contents include ‘A Compendious Chronology’, tables of interest, lists of clergymen and judges, distances between towns, days of fairs, and an advertisement for Dr Bateman’s Spirit of Scurvy Grass. Rare: seventeenth-century Goldsmith almanacs do not generally survive in more than one or two copies for any given year. Of the present, ESTC shows one location only, the Pepys Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge (two copies, one belonging to Pepys, the other without a shelfmark and perhaps a ghost). Wing A 1796A. See illustration at end. 4 ARISTOTLE’S COMPLEAT MASTERPIECE, in three Parts: displaying the Secrets of Nature in the Generation of Man … To which is added, a Treasure of Health; or, the Family Physician … The twenty- ninth Edition. London: Printed and sold by the Booksellers. 1763. [Bound with:] ARISTOTLE’S COMPLEAT AND EXPERIENC’D MIDWIFE. In two Parts. I. Guide for child-bearing Women, in the Time of their Conception, bearing and suckling their Children … II. Proper and safe Remedies or the curing all those Distempers that are incident to the female Sex; and more especially those that are any Obstruction to their bearing of Children … Made English by W–– S––, M.D. The eleventh Edition. London: Printed and sold by the Booksellers. [c. 1765]. [and with:] ARISTOTLE’S BOOK OF PROBLEMS, with other Astronomers, Astrologers, Physicians, and Philosophers. Wherein is contained divers Questions and Answers touching the State of Man’s Body … The twenty- seventh Edition. London: Printed for J. W. J. K. D. M. A. B. E. R. M. R. T. L. B. M. and A. W. [c. 1765]. [and with:] ARISTOTLE’S LAST LEGACY. Unfolding the Mystery of Nature in the Generation of Man … London: Printed for C. Hitch and L. Hawes; S. Crowder and Co.; H. Woodgate and S. Brooks … and G. Ware … 1769. Four works, 12mo., bound in one vol.: Masterpiece pp. 144, including the woodcut frontispiece (with images on both sides), and with a folding woodcut of a child in the womb, with letterpress explanation, and several further woodcut illustrations; Midwife pp. [4], iv, 156, [4], including a woodcut frontispiece; Problems pp. 156, including a woodcut frontispiece; Legacy pp. 120, including a woodcut frontispiece (from the same block as that in Problems); fine copies, bound together in contemporary sheep, spine gilt, a little rubbed. £1600 A complete set of four popular pseudo-Aristotelian manuals on procreation, gestation and childbirth, in exceptionally good condition. Aristotle’s Compleat Masterpiece was the most influential of these texts, the first sex manual in English when it first appeared in 1684; it was reprinted throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It also includes a section on ‘monstrous births’ – witness the frontispiece and the woodcuts on pp. 92-95. Aristotle’s Last Legacy, which first appeared in around 1720, was in effect a digest of the Masterpiece. Aristotle’s Compleat and experience’d Midwife (first 1700) was apparently ‘translated’ (i.e. edited) by the self-trained popular empiric William Salmon, a prolific author of domestic medical treatises; some of the text is drawn from Nicholas Culpeper. The Book of Problems was a medieval complition of questions and answers on natural history, with only a few devoted to reproduction; to the ‘problems’ of ‘Aristotle’ are added those of Marcantonio Zimara and Alexander of Aphrodisias. These texts were all frequently reprinted, and various editions were occasionally gathered together with a general title-page; it is clear that none was ever present here, though they were probably issued together. All printings are uncommon, and some have no doubt vanished entirely; surviving copies tend to be in mediocre condition at best. Of the present editions ESTC lists the following copies: Masterpiece: British Library; Northwestern, Smith, US National Library of Medicine, and Michigan. Midwife: British Library, Royal College of Obstetricians, Wellcome; and Countway. Problems (one of two ‘twenty-seventh’ editions): British Library; Smith, US National Library of Medicine, and Chicago. Legacy: British Library only, imperfect. REGENCY BLACKMAIL IN VERSE 5 ASHE, Thomas. Manuscript, probably autograph (there are a few small substantive changes), of ‘The Claustral Palace: an Ovidian and political poem, by Thos Algernon [altered from Ashe] Esqr. The Hero of the Spirit of “The Book” &c … London, Printed for the Author by –––’. London, c. 1811-1814? 4to., 64 unnumbered leaves, written on rectos only in brown ink, with scattered corrections; the paper watermarked Budgen & Wilmott 1810, three vertical creases where folded before binding; in a fine contemporary binding of red morocco, gilt; small inkstamp to title-page, somewhat faded, but possibly that of Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany, second son of George III; bookplate removed; the title-page altered to conceal Ashe’s authorship (and now reading ‘by Thomas Algernon Esq’). £2250 An extrordinary, unpublished manuscript poem by the Irish-born literary adventurer Thomas Ashe, ‘dedicated’ to Princess Charlotte, the eldest daughter of George III, and describing, in Ovidian tones, the love affairs of her younger sisters.