PROVINCIAL POETRY METHODISM.
FIRST EDITION. 12mo, 175 x 104 mms., pp. iv, 5 - 94 [95 Stationer's Hall registration, 96 blank], bound in not-so-recent quarter dark green morocco, linen boards, gilt spine; first six leaves are mounted on stubs, the title-page is slightly frayed and is firmly attached to the recto of the preceding leaf, ex-library with bookplate of City of Nottingham Public Libraries on front paste-down end-paper, with bookseller's note in pencil on recto of front free-endpaper. A pencil annotation at the top of page 5 identifies the author os some of the poems: "Many of these verses were written by Wm Singleton." "On Christmas Day" on page 26 is "By the Rev. J Moon." The preface begins, "The following original Poems and Hymns, ae published for the benefit of the Methodist Sunday School in Nottingham."; ad ends: "The Poems andHymns are all new, what other excellencies they have I leave to the Reader to determine, - if they be of use to any one, God shall have all the glory." The present copy appears to be unique in naming, with a manuscript note, one of the main authors of the poetry, who is not named in the printed text of the book. A pencilled annotation at the top of page 5 reads, "Many of these pieces were written by Wm Singleton." Notably, there is no author named William Singleton recorded in the online Jackson Bibliography of Romantic Poetry. There was also no writer named William Singleton found by James Ward in his extensive Descriptive Catalogue of Books Relating to Nottinghamshire (1892). Yet there is a well-known William Singleton who flourished in Nottingham in the 1790s, and he is very likely indeed to be the author of these poems. This is the William Singleton credited with founding a pioneering school for adult learning: "In 1798 an Adult Sunday School for Bible reading and instruction in the secular arts of writing and arithmetic was opened in a room belonging to the Methodist New Connection in Nottingham, by William Singleton, himself a Methodist. He had help from a Quaker tradesman, Samuel Fox, who afterwards became specially identified with the school. Before long it came, indeed, to be principally conducted by Mr. Fox " (John Wilhelm Rowntree and Henry Bryan Binns, A History of the Adult School Movement (1903), p. 10). In this copy there is also one other manuscript annotation giving an author attribution on page 26. The single poem titled "On Christmas Day" is said to be by "the Rev. J Moon." he only other copy of this first edition that I have located is the one held by Cambridge University Libraries, and their online catalogue does not mention any manuscript annotations. The copy on offer is therefore most likely to be not only an extremely rare example of the text as first printed, but additionally significant historically for its being uniquely embellished with authorship attributions in manuscript.
[MOTHERWELL (William)]
FIRST EDITION. Large 8vo, 336 x 137 mms. pp. iv, 692, viii, engraved frontispiece, additional engraved title-page, recently rebound in half calf, buckram, gilt spine, black morocco label. A fine copy. The poet and editor William Motherwell (17971835) is probably best-know for a work that appeared a year earlier, 1827, Minstrelsy Ancient and Modern, described by ODNB as a "carefully compiled collection of ballads, with a critical introduction surveying previous collections. During its compilation he corresponded with Sir Walter Scott, whose Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border he much admired. In 1828 Motherwell founded and edited the Paisley Magazine." Motherwell published several of his own verses in the magazine, "a respectable provincial work; and in it, for ?the first time, appeared some of the poet's best pieces, such as The Sword Chant of Thorstein RaudiMidnight and MoonshineThe Water! The Water!The Wooing Song of Jarl Egill Skallagrimand Wearie's Well" (preface to the second edition of Motherwell's works). A citation to the work appears in the Journal of Folklore Research (1994),
JUVENILE SPORT.
12mo, 133 x 87 mms., pp. [iv], 168, 24 engraved plates, first 3 hand-coloured, lacking advertisements at end, light foxing and spotting, tissue repair to inner margins of first and last couple of leaves, repaired tears to "Hockey" and "Leaping" plates, some leaves with small loss to foot, crudely bound in green roan spine, boards (soiled), expert repairs to joints and spine extremities. Not a salubrious copy but a lucky survival. An earlier edition was published in 1805 and another in 1812. The games are presented in a narrative, starring a boy named Thomas White. I am old enough to have played some of the games and to have known about others; but I wonder how many ten-year-olds these days have flown a kite or spun a top? Gumuchian,; 804; Moon, M. Tabart,; 14(2) Osborne lists an 1812 edition lacking three plaes.
WALKER (Joseph)
FIRST LONDON EDITION. 4to, 264 x 197 mms., pp. [iv] v - xii, 166, 124, engraved portrait frontispiece of Cormac Common, engraved head and tailpiece, several engravings in text, engraved plate at end of text block, attractively bound in contemporary mottled calf, with elaborate gilt borders to a floral motif, enclosing a triple gilt rectangular border, with a fan motif at each corner, spine gilt in compartments ( but faded), morocco label; bound without the two pages of music as an appendix, perhaps deliberately, with the binder having neatly excised the catchword and repaired the damage to the paper. Brian Boydell, writing in New Grove, asserts that the Irish antiquary, Joseph Cooper Walker (1761 - 1810), in his book, "though written in a turgid and verbose style, [it] includes much information not available elsewhere, particularlry in relation to the haper Turlouigh Carolan. Five poems and seven airs by Carolan are included in a chapter on his life. It also includes a highly fanciful essay by William Beauford, The Poetical Accents of the Irish, which sought to prove that a system of musical notation was in use in Ireland in the 11th and 12th centuries. In all, 43 Irish airs are included, providing one of the early sources of native Irish music, and a stimulus to its study, which was to bear fruit shortly afterwards in the work of Edward Bunting." Boydell's remarks are not that different in kind from those in the Monthly Review for December 1787: "The present rage for antiquities in Ireland surpasses that of any other nation in Europe. The Welsh who have no contemptible opinion of the antiquity of their poetry and music are left among the children of the earth by Mr. Walker and the writers of the Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis. Indeed, there is no antiquity short of the creation that can justify these authors." Morris, H. B. (2004). Joseph Cooper Walker, Esq. (C. 1761-1810), A Forgotten Irish Bard: A Dissection of His Advertisement as a Map to His Melodies. Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal, 5(1).
BAILLIE (J,)
8vo, 208 x 127 mms., pp. 318. BOUND WITH: Wesley, John. Primitive Physic: or, an Easy and Natural Method of Curing most Diseases. Burslem: Printed by J. Tregortha, 1812. 8vo (in 4s), pp. 103 [104 blank], followed by six leaves y intended for another medical work. 2 volumes in 1, bound in contemporary sheepskin, black leather label. Two scarce provincially-printed medical books, bound (possibly from the parts, given inscription about binding) in a volume and presented by a Lancashire mother, Penelope Vavasour, to her daughter Julia in the year the latter gave birth to her second child. T he first work is in two sections. The first section concerns itself with matters more physical, with chapters on conduct during pregnancy, a section on childbirth, and proper food for infants; the second with matters more spiritual, with chapters on the origin of pride and vanity, the choice of toys, and books. Library Hub records 2 copies, at the BL and NLS, while Worldcat adds 4 more, 3 of which are in New York: Columbia,NYPL, SUNY, and Virginia. The second work is a reprint of John Wesley's 1747 medical guide printed in the Staffordshire town of Burslem. Library Hub records just a single copy, in the Wellcome Collection, to which Worldcat adds 2 copies, both in the United States: the National Library of Medicine and Wesleyan College, Georgia. To the rear are bound the contents leaves and a leaf from the introduction of an edition of William Buchan's Domestic Medicine; given the similarities in paper and print with the pages that immediately precede it, it seems likely to be from Tregortha's 1812 Burslem-printed edition (two American institutions only in Worldcat), and therefore possibly appended by accident in the print-shop.
O'KEEFE (Adelaide). MONTOLIEU (Isabelle de)
FIRST FRENCH TRANSLATION. 6 volumes. 12mo, 176 x 97 mms., pp. [iv], iv, 328; [iv], 268; [iv], 250; [iv], 298; [iv], 206; 215 [216 blank], including half-titles, engraved frontispiece to volumes 1 -5, bound in contemporary quarter green calf, marbled boards, spines gilt to a lyre motif, but very rubbed and dried. The Irish poet and novelist Adelaide O'Keefe (17761865) was the daughter of the dramatist and actor John O'Keeffe (17471833) and Mary Heaphy (17571813). Her first pulication was a novel, Llewellin in 1799, "a fictional account of the life of Piers Gaveston, as narrated by Chaucer. But it was her poems published in Ann and Jane Taylor's Original Poems for Infant Minds (1804) which established her reputation and remain, to the detriment of her novels, her best-known work." (ODNB). She publishe Dudley, an epistolary novel, in 1819. Raven, James, Antonia Forster, Peter Garside, Rainer Schöwerling; with the assistance of Stephen Bending, Christopher Skelton-Foord and Karin Wünsche, The English Novel 1770 - 1829: A Bibliographical Survey of Prose Fiction Published in the British Isles, 1819: 52, locating very few copies. This French translation seems more common in libraries, but not in commerce.
STOTHARD (Thomas). BRAY (Mrs. [Anna Eliza])
FIRST EDITION. 4to, 213 x 160 mms., pp. xxiv, 246 [247 - 248 adverts], engraved portrait of Stothard, engraved and printed title-pages, 53 illustrations within text, handsomely bound by F. Bedford in full contemporary polished calf,gilt borders on covers, spine richly gilt to a floral motif in compartments, morocco, all edges gilt; lightly foxed throughout (as with the other two copies that I've had in stock) some very slight imperfections to binding, but a very good and attractive copy (unlike the other two!). The novelist and prose writer Anna Eliza Bray (17901883; [née Kempe; other married name Stothard) took painting lessons from Thomas Stothard and married hlis son, Charles Alfred Stothard (17861821). After his death she married the Revd Edward Atkyns Bray (17781857), vicar of Tavistock, Devon, in 1822. Stothard, R.A. (1755-1834) was the third English artist, after William Hogarth and Michael Angelo Rooker, to produce illustrations to a published edition of Tristram Shandy. The binder, Francis Bedford (1799 - 1884) was well-known for the care he took with books that he bound.
SANDERSON (Robert) . WALTON (Isaac)
FIRST EDITION. 12mo, 175 x 108 mms., pp. [240], recently and unsympathetically recased in quarter buckram, marbled boards; lacks portrait. A Calvinist, Bishop Robert Sanderson, (1587-1663) made an impact his contemporaries, including Charles I, as Walton records, "I carry my ears to hear other Preachers', said the king, 'but I carry my Conscience to hear Mr. Sanderson, and to act accordingly." ONDB records, "A doctrinal Calvinist, Sanderson had tried to resolve the controversy created by Richard Mountague's books in the mid-1620s by offering a slight alteration of the sublapsarian doctrine of predestination. Nevertheless, he insisted that the Church of England held that divine act of election was entirely gratuitous and to suggest otherwise was 'quarter-Pelagian and Arminian novelty' (Works, 5.277). Marginal notes condemning the Arminians and 'their Semipelagian subtilties' continued to appear in all editions of his sermons until 1657, and vigorous efforts in the late 1650s by Henry Hammond, Thomas Pierce, and others to change his mind had little success. Sanderson's soteriology, his denunciations of usury and idleness, and his support for the reformation of manners show that he had much in common with puritans. Izaak Walton's biography of Sanderson wholly ignores his Calvinism, his agreement with puritans on many issues, and his quarrels with Hammond and the churchmanship that Hammond and his friends represented. However, throughout his long career he rejected puritan arguments against ceremonies, probably in part because of his observation of the actions of John Cotton and his followers at nearby Boston. Sanderson, deeply concerned to retain protestant unity against Rome, was an anti-puritan in the Whitgiftian mould, an excellent example of the way 'that even men who shared great tracts of ideological terrain with the Puritans could end up hating them with a passion' (Lake, 115)." I suspect that the number of scholars who would be familiar with and under stand the issues, doctrines, and beliefs in those few sentencdes would be very feew.
GESSNER (Salomon)
Large 8vo (in 4s), 270 x 173 mms., pp. [vi], 129 [130 blank], engraved title-page followed by drop-title leaf, 9 full-page enraved plates, 10 engraved tail-pieces, and 2 engraved head-pieces, with later inscription and date,"William Burton/ October 1807" and a transcription of a letter in French by Fuslin to Gessner and Gessner's response on three pages, bound in contemporary calf and expertly rebacked with new red morocco. A very good copy This first translation of Moralische Erzæhlungen und Idyllen (Zurich, 1756) is easily the best-known work of Salomon Gessner (1730 1788), the Swiss artist, poet, government official, etc. The plates are indeed rather splendid. The Monthly Review for 1776 commented, "Perhaps there is no object in poetical criticism that requires a more consummate judgment than to work with certainty the dividing line between what is simple and what is silly. The innumerable errors of this kind, that we have met with confirm the truth of this observation, and it has occurred once or twice on the view of the publication before use." Ah. well: enjoy the illustrations. Martin Bircher, et al., Salomon Gessner: Maler und Dichter der Idylle 17301788. Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel 1982,
HAMILTON (Anthony), Count
12mo, pp. iv, [ii], [v] - xi [xii blank], 196, engraved portrait of Hamilton as frontispiece, contemporary tree calf, recently rebacked with plain spine; lacks half-title, plate, and adverts leaf at end. Hamilton published Histoire de fleur d'épine in 1730, and this English translation first appeared in 1793. Hamilton is identified as the author in this second edition. Reviewing the first edition, the Monthly Review commented, "We recommend.the pretty tale of May Flower to the perusal of such of our readers as are disposed to enjoy an hour's light amusement, without calling themselves too strictly to account, when it is past. The work is elegantly translated." Roscoe A210. Raven, James, Antonia Forster, Peter Garside, Rainer Schöwerling; with the assistance of Stephen Bending, Christopher Skelton-Foord and Karin Wünsche, The English Novel 1770 - 1829: A Bibliographical Survey of Prose Fiction Published in the British Isles, 1793: 20.
FIRST AND ONLY EDITION. 8vo, 178 x 112 mms., pp. vi [vii Errata, viii blank], 141 [142 blank], bound in contemporary polished calf, neatly recornered and rebacked with original spine laid down, new red label, a very good and clean copy. The Scottish engraver Sir Robert Strange (17211792 In 1768, troubles in the Incorporated Society of Artists, of which Strange (1721 - 1792) was a member, led to the foundation of the Royal Academy. Strange opposed those breaking away, and he came to believe that the exclusion from the Academy of engravers was leveled against himself. His rival Francesco Bartolozzi was elected, ostensibly as a painter. With other engravers (William Sharp, John Hall, and William Woollett), Strange declined associate membership. In 1775 he published on his grievances in An Inquiry into the Rise and Establishment of the Royal Academy of Arts. He moved to France in 1775 and spent the next five years there.
