GUTZKOW, Karl Ferdinand.
An early manuscript copy of this play, which first appeared in print across three numbers of the Novellen-Zeitung as well as being privately printed in book form, both in 1845. Gutzkow (1811 1878) had initially worked as a journalist, also producing a number of novels in the 1830s, an attempt to use literature as a lever to shift rooted prejudices and to set up a new social and political order until a federal decree labelled him as a subversive writer (Oxford Companion to German Literature). At this point Gutzkow turned away from the novel and devoted himself to writing plays which dealt, in historical disguise, with political and social ideas of the day, and not infrequently with his own emotional life (ibid.). Manuscript on paper, small 4to (205 × 172 mm), pp. [328]; old boards, rebacked in cloth; (Berlin?) Hoftheater stamp at foot of title.
BISSE, Thomas.
Printed on large paper and inscribed For Mrs Rudd on the front flyleaf. According to Maslen & Lancaster, only 100 copies were printed on royal paper (as opposed to 2000 on demy). Maslen & Lancaster, The Bowyer Ledgers, 676. 8vo (226 × 139 mm), pp. [8], 173, [1]; some offsetting and spotting; contemporary red morocco elaborately tooled gilt, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt; rubbed, sometime neatly rebacked and recornered, preserving the original spine; ink ownership stamp of Fritz Fasting (19111979).
POPE, Alexander.
One of at least five printings in 1736 of the French prose translationthe first translation into Frenchof Popes Essay on Man by Étienne de Silhouette (17091767), Controller-General of Finances under Louis XV, who produced a number of translations (Pope, Bolingbroke, Warburton), as well as giving his name to the cut shadow profiles which became so popular at the time. This copy bears an edifying engraved label on the benefits of methodical reading, presumably in preparation for giving the book to a young reader. This edition not in Rochedieu. There were four other printings the same year, two, as here, with no imprint (one Paris, Jean-Barthélemy Alix, pp. xxiv, 81, [3]; the other pp. xxx, 109, [1]), the other two both styled édition revue par le traducteur, with a Londres (Pierre Dunoyer) and Amsterdam (Jean-Frédéric Bernard) imprint, one pp. xxxvi, 112, the other pp. xxxiv, 103, [1]. In the present copy, the title and c4 have both been cancelled and the cancellans, in each case, has been mounted on the stub. 12mo (158 × 91 mm) in eights and fours, pp. xxxi, [1], 112; with a 4-page offprint (Affiches de Février 1786) on Fabres Essai sur les facultés de lâme bound in at the end; early ms. ink emendation (completing the word espace) at the end of p. 7; some light browning/offsetting; late eighteenth-century red morocco, smooth spine lettered gilt, all edges gilt, marbled endpapers; from the library of Hubert de Ganay (18881974), with his booklabel.
REEVES, John Sims.
First edition. Sims Reeves (18181900) was one of the leading English tenors of the nineteenth century. He made his début at La Scala in 1846 as Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor [featured in one of the plates here, opposite p. 74] and in 1847 he appeared as Zamoro in Verdis Alzira. Returning to London in December that year he sang Edgardo at Drury Lane, where on 20 December 1847 he created the role of Lyonnel in Balfes The Maid of Honour. In February 1848 he sang Faust in the first performance in England of Berliozs La damnation de Faust under the composer. From 1848 he sang at Her Majestys Theatre, first under Lumleys and then Maplesons managements. In 1851 he was briefly engaged at the Théâtre Italien, Paris. In London he sang the title role in Faust in the operas first performance in English in 1864, and Huon in the revival of Oberon in 1866. In 1848 he appeared at the Norwich Festival and sang in Handels Messiah at the Sacred Harmonic Society, and thereafter he appeared regularly at the various choral festivals. He was particularly admired in Handel oratorios and for his performance of the Evangelist in Bachs St Matthew Passion, which he sang under Sterndale Bennett in 1862 He made his formal farewell appearance at the Royal Albert Hall in 1891, but reappeared in a concert in 1893, and made a tour of South Africa in 1896 with his pupil Maud Richard, whom he had married the previous year (New Grove). 8vo (218 × 137 mm), pp. viii, 280, [4] advertisements; with a portrait frontispiece (Printed by C. G. Röder, Leipzig, a well-known lithographic printer for music) and 6 plates; occasional light spotting; original publishers decorated cloth, upper cover and spine lettered gilt; a little rubbed; inscribed Yours faithfully J. Sims Reeves 1890 on the verso of the frontispiece, to T. H. Peirce.
ZINTERHOF, Bernhard.
Seemingly a self-published book, the memoirs of a young Austrian abroad, typed up by the author himself, who apologises for the look of the final product in his preface. The young Zinterhof came to London in 1903 from Vienna in order to improve his English, working for Lord Walters. Or so he says. I have been unable to trace a Lord Walters at that time. Is the whole book actually an elaborate fiction which, in terms of composition (photographs etc.), prefigures the work of W. G. Sebald by almost 90 years? Typescript copy, 2 vols, thick 8vo (236 × 168 mm); vol. I: pp. [4], 00 , 00/a , 01 02a, 02b , 03 032, 134, 134a 134h, 8, 8/1 8/2, 8a 8f, 9 352 (some cut-out images from Madame Tussaud s pasted to pp. 269 276); with 5 black-and-white photographic illustrations pasted onto additional leaves, plus one small photograph, and another from a newspaper, loosely inserted; vol. II: pp. [8], 353 , 353a 353d, 354 813; with 6 black-and-white photographic illustrations pasted onto additional leaves; some numbered blanks between sections and at the end in each volume; contemporary cloth, spines lettered gilt; slipcase, a little worn.