PIOZZI, HESTER LYNCH [THRALE]
2 vols, 8vo, contemporary red half calf, blue paper boards, marbled endpapers, green leather spine labels, gilt rules and lettering. Six pages of publisher's advertisements in volume two. In 1784 Hester Lynch Thrale (1741-1821), the famous friend and confidante of Samuel Johnson, married an Italian musician, Gabriel Mario Piozzi, and they soon set off for Europe, where they traveled for three years, which she artfully chronicled in one of the most entertaining accounts of the Grand Tour. Written in an informal conversational style, Observations and Reflections is "alive with present-tense immediacy, to erode the barriers between diary and travel narrative. Her delight in Piozzi and in Italy was everywhere apparent in the materials she included in this development of the genre, which subverted masculine tropes of the grand tourist as disillusioned and hard to please" - ODNB. Piozzi's work became a model for other women travel writers and a source for authors like Ann Radcliffe in her novel The Mysteries of Udolpho. Bookplate of Charles Langton Massingberd on the front paste-downs, below which is the bookplate of American author Larry McMurtry. This is a duplicate from his collection of books by women travelers. Edges and boards a little worn; light foxing to the prelims; very good copy. ESTC T71718; Rothschild 1551; Pine-Coffin 784-5; Robinson, Wayward Women, page 243
[IRVING, WASHINGTON]
2 vols, 8vo, original printed blue-gray wrappers, untrimmed. The first edition in Swedish, translated by Lars Arnell, of Washington's Irving's Tales of a Traveller, his continuation of the short stories that began with The Sketch Book. Contemporary ink signature on each front wrapper. Wrappers slightly worn; fine copy, enclosed in a quarter morocco clamshell box. Langfeld & Blackburn, page 71; OCLC records three copies in the US (Harvard, Kansas and NYPL) and three in Sweden First edition of the first Swedish translation.
LACROIX, PAUL, COMPILER
12mo, contemporary green half morocco by V. Champs, marbled paper boards, spine gilt-decorated in five compartments, gilt lettering, t.e.g., others untrimmed. An interesting compilation by Paul Lacroix (1806-84), French antiquary, bibliographer, editor and author, of the library of Marie Antoinette that was housed at her estate, Petit Trianon. The 736 entries are arranged by sciences and arts, belles lettres (the majority of the works) and histoire. Along with the usual suspects are imaginary voyages and a number of memoirs of amorous characters that shocked the general reader when the catalogue was first published. Lacroix, who often wrote under the pseudonym "Bibliophile Jacob," compiled this when he was librarian of the Arsenal Library, Paris. Bookplate of F. T. Kunkelmann on the front paste-down. Upper joint starting, but sound; fine copy. First edition, number 75 of 300 numbered copies on Holland paper (of a total of 317 copies).
TURNER, CHARLES
Small 8vo, original green cloth, gilt lettering, untrimmed. A substantial collection of over 100 sonnets by Charles Turner (formerly Tennyson and often referred to as Tennyson-Turner), an accomplished and prolific sonneteer (his collected poems contained over 400). In the ODNB, Roger Evans writes that this 1864 collection, Turner's second book, "reveals the influence of the sacramentalist idiom of Keble [i.e., John Keble, Church of England clergyman and poet, 1792-1866], a pronounced antipathy to current neologistic thinking, and a sensitive delicacy in its descriptions of natural forms." Charles Turner (1808-1879) was the brother of Alfred and Frederick Tennyson. Under the terms of a will, an inheritance from an uncle requested that he change his surname. Edges slightly rubbed; very good copy.
Small 12mo, 19th century brown half morocco, signed P. Pralon of Dijon, dark brown paper boards, blind rules and gilt lettering. Woodcut device on the title-page and two woodcut initials. [12], 95 pages. Three ingenious, bold and entertaining imaginary conversations between the fictional character of Moliere's famous play, Tartuffe, and the deceased FranÁois Rabelais, written pseudonymously and modeled most closely on the dialogues of Lucian, Pietro Aretino and Bernard le Bovier Fontenelle. The subject of the conversations is women, men's relationship to women, procreation, coquetry, seduction, and caring for them, including the roles of eunuchs in classical antiquity. Moliere's character Tartuffe made his first appearance on stage in 1663. Outwardly he was pious, but in reality he was mercenary, lecherous and deceitful. Both character and play were popular, but frowned upon by the church and banned, which made pairing him in dialogue with the master of satire, free-thinker and great writer Rabelais (circa 1485-1553) intriguing. In one part of the second conversation, the character of Rabelais teasingly critiques the work of Moliere. And in the preface, the pseudonymous Le Sieur de la Daillhiere falsely claims, as Tartuffe might have, that there is no sin in the text of the dialogues. ? This is an early example of a dialogue that uses literary figures as its interlocutors. The dialogue form was popular in France in the 17th century and was used most successfully by Fontenelle (1657-1757) and FranÁois FÈnelon (1651-1715). In the preface the author states that his reason for anonymity was "that the work doesn't deserve it, being a mere trifle in comparison to other works he is about to give to the public, of which the present is merely an outline." ? From the library of French bibliographer Gabriel Peignot (1767-1849), with the manuscript notation on front blank, "Vente Peignot." Catalogue de la BibliothËque de feu Gabriel Peignot, page 227, #1883 (this copy). On the front paste-down is the armorial bookplate of Jean-Baptiste Philippe Constant Moens (1833-1908), the Belgian philatelist considered the first dealer in stamps for collectors. Edges of the binding a little rubbed; scattered stains and foxing; paper repairs to the final two leaves, mostly marginal but affecting a few letters at the extremities of three lines in the penultimate leaf; very good copy, enclosed in a quarter morocco clamshell case. Brunet, II, 470; Cioranescu, Bibliographie de la LittÈrature FranÁaise, 38017; OCLC records 12 copies, five in the US and seven in Europe and Britain
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