[LANDOR, WALTER SAVAGE]
Small 8vo, early 19th century blue diced calf, green leather label, gilt rules, decorations and lettering. Bound without the half-title. The first published play by Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864), an historical drama based on the Spaniard, Julian, Count of Ceuta, his quarrel with Roderic and the tragic consequences it had on Spain. This famous event in Spanish history was also used in verse and plays by Walter Scott, Robert Southey and Willilam Rowley. Some minor chafing and wear to the binding; very good copy. Wise & Wheeler 12; NCBEL III, 1211
[CALDERON DE LA BARCA, FRANCES]
8vo, original blind-stamped black cloth, gilt lettering. 16-page publisher's catalogue dated August, 1845. "This is the earliest and most balanced first-hand account of Mexico to be written by a woman" - Robinson. Frances Calderon de la Barca (1804-82) was born in Scotland and raised in France and Boston, where she met the Spanish Minister to the United States, Angelo Calderon de la Barca. Together they traveled to Mexico. Bookplate of American novelist Larry McMurtry on the front paste-down; this is a duplicate from his large collection of books by women travelers. Spine and edges repaired; some light browning and foxing; very good copy. Smith, American Travellers Abroad, C2; Sabin 9889; Robinson, Wayward Women, page 233; Theakstone, Victorian & Edwardian Women Travellers, page 65 First English edition, preceded a few months by the American edition.
EDWARDS, AMELIA BLANFORD
3 vols, 8vo, 19th century brown half sheep, marbled-paper boards, gilt rules and lettering. Without the half-titles and publisher's advertisements. One of several novels by the intrepid traveler and travel writer, Amelia B. Edwards (1831-92), the story of "a penniless aristocratic brilliant young musician [who] redeems his family lands and makes a fortune by running the Union blockade into southern ports, and then marries a rich merchant's daughter who worships rank, instead of a charming young daughter of an artist, with whom he had been in love. A very good novel." - Wolff. From the library of Larry McMurtry, with his bookplate on the front paste-downs. Marbled-paper boards a bit rubbed; prelims foxed, particularly the title-pages; a good copy. Wolff 2009; OCLC records ten copies, to which Jisc adds one
WINES, ENOCH COBB
12mo, original black cloth and printed paper label. An iformed perspective on Boston in 38 letters originally published under the pseudonym "Peter Peregrine" by Enoch Cobb Wines (1806-79), clergyman and prison reform advocate. Wines visited Boston to educate himself about the New England city and report on his impressions. He writes about the architecture, George Catlin's "Indian Gallery" and collection of Indian curiosities, the Boston Athenaeum, Harvard College, Mount Auburn Cemetery, the poetry of Oliver Wendell Holmes, sermons of William Ware, and he extensively compares the North American Review to its European rivals. In some copies, the text is followed by four pages of advertisements for other publications by Little and Brown, not present in this copy. Some light foxing and wear to the cloth; very good copy. American Imprints 53696; Sabin 104774; Howes W-560
MORE, HENRY
12mo, contemporary sprinkled calf rebacked to style, red leather spine label, gilt lettering. Title-page in red and black. A philosophical-theological discussion in three dialogues between Cuphophron, Hylobares, Philopolis, Sophron and other Greek-named interlocutors by the poet, theologian and philosopher Henry More (1614-1687), published under the pseudonym Franciscus Evistor Palaeopolitanus, though in this earlier issue only the initials F. P. are on the title-page. Among the subjects discussed is the validity of the verses of Lucretius. Title-page a little dust-soiled; some smudges in the text; edges and spine skillfully repaired; very good copy. ESTC R17163; Wing M2650; NCBEL I, 2335
BOWLES, WILLIAM LISLE
8vo, later olive half calf, marbled paper boards and matching endpapers, gilt lettering, a.e.g. A collection of the writings of William Lisle Bowles (1752-1860) in which he defends himself against attacks he had received from Byron, Thomas Campbell, Octavius Gilchrist (a "Certain Critic and Grocer") and others over his treatment of Alexander Pope in the ten-volume edition of Pope's works that Bowles edited. The pamphlet war that ensued became known as the "Pope Controversy" and here Bowles presents the lion's share of it with notes. See Cecil Woolf, "Some Uncollected Authors," The Book Collector, Autumn, 1958, for an interesting account of Bowles, and the DNB. Edges a little rubbed; preliminary binder's blank detached; very good copy.
JOHNSON, SAMUEL
Four vols, 8vo, original black cloth, gilt lettering. Frontis portrait. The definitive edition of Johnson's famous Lives of the English Poets, issued 225 years after its original publication. This edition, edited by 18th century English literature scholar Roger Lonsdale, has been celebrated as a great achievement in textual scholarship in giving Johnson's 52 biographies literary and historical context unlike anything that been previously accomplished. "The crowning achievement of Lonsdale's career is his magisterial edition of Johnson's Live of the Poets, a work more than two decades in the making. . . . This richly illuminating guide to Samuel Johnson's culminating critical accomplishment also delivers an astonishingly comprehensive masterclass in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century poetry, from the shifting status of writing for publication to the increasingly expanding market. Lonsdale's sympathetic understanding of Johnson [is] . . . a rare work whose greatness stands with Johnson's own" - Michael F. Suarez, S.J., in his introduction to Christopher Edwards Antiquarian Books List 87, The Library of Roger Lonsdale. Ink ownership signature with a few notes in pencil on the rear endpapers and margins of another Johnson scholar, Chester Chapin, dated June 14, 2006. This edition is inexplicably out of print - in any format: hard cover, paperback, e-book or print on demand - and accordingly scarce. Strange and shocking that Clarendon Press, a branch of Oxford University Press, would allow an important text like this to be unavailable except at select libraries. Fine copy, enclosed in the publisher's slipcase.
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 rubbed and worn; light foxing to the prelims; very good copy. ESTC T71718; Rothschild 1551; Pine-Coffin 784-5; Robinson, Wayward Women, page 243