importantly making full use of the much larger space provided by this folio album, some of ..... to learning, carefully
THREE COLLECTORS OF ALGAE 1. [SEAWEED ALBUM]. Collector unknown, probably 19th century. 4to, ll. 137, of which 75 have seaweed specimens; there are approximately 85 pressed seaweed species in total; original black roan binding, gilt and blindstamped with floral tools, rubbed; spine cracked and detached at bottom, some loss at top of spine; patterned endpapers; leaves multi-coloured, edges gilt; slightly stained throughout but in good condition; seaweed mostly intact; one specimen is missing, one has detached from its paper and is damaged, others have suffered some loss, else in very good condition; the last specimen has adhered to the preceding page; inscriptions to two specimens. £550 A very attractive personal collection of seaweed assembled by an unknown owner in a generic ‘album’, with gilt-edge pages in a variety of pastel hues. Seaweed collecting in the Victorian era is now considered to have been a prominently feminine pursuit (though there were undoubtedly male amateur collectors of seaweed), typified as such by the fact that Queen Victoria is said to have created an album.
Women could engage in science as a social accomplishment, winning the admiration of professional, male scientists, and aiding them in their endeavours. Numerous books published on the subject, both scientific and amateur, attest to the popularity of seaweed collecting in the era. Among them, and of particular fame in the history of early female photography, was Anna Atkins’s cyanotype Photographs of British Algae (1843). Later came William Harvey’s important Manual of Marine Algae (1849). At the height of interest in Britain, seaside-shops were selling scrap paper and all the necessary gear for cutting and preserving algae.
This user has pressed most of their specimens on a separate piece of paper before inserting them into the album, but some larger pieces are stuck straight in. The collector was evidently British, the two inscribed labels hinting to a West Country locality, or perhaps an expedition to that area: Dartmouth and the Isles of Scilly. In each case the inscription gives the Latin names for each species, both of them species of Delassaria algae. The user’s interest is not purely scientific but to a large degree aesthetic: care has been taken in many cases to achieve symmetrical or circular forms and eye-catching arrangements of the specimens, though some designs were more successful than others. One note written in pencil on the back of a particularly botched bit of algae attests to the user’s visual sensibilities: ‘very bad’. This is not to say that their aim is purely artistic: the significance of the two adjoining Delassaria algae might be their geographical origins and resulting differences, and there is evidently some attempt to place similar species in proximity. Indeed the album appears to have been designed as a whole rather than assembled piece by piece as the specimens were discovered.
2. [SEAWEED ALBUM]. Algae Britannicae. Collector unknown, probably 19th century. Vol. II only? Folio, ll. 75, of which 54 have seaweed specimens, amounting to 98 seaweed species; in original brown buckram binding, ¼ dark blue morocco, gilt, title gilt on spine, gilt raised bands, rubbed; leather and metal clasp intact; pages pale green, stained in places, sometimes by seaweed; seaweed in excellent condition, some samples very large and complete; some labels likely missing; user’s pencil marks throughout, handwritten labels to many samples. £1500 An impressive album of algae samples from British waters, showing considerable attention to taxonomy of species and families. This collector was evidently much more dedicated, though they were still almost certainly a hobbyist rather than a scientist by profession. Here the system of organisation is more clearly pre-meditated, perhaps even prepared according to instructions received with the book: printed labels, some with borders, denote the Latin names of series, families and individual species. Families like Delassaria appear together in groups (the same species that are named in the first album appear again here), with the user identifying in faint pencil where the missing seaweed will fit in. Where printed labels are absent, notes in ink identify the species, location and even rarity. Though several notes referring to Plymouth Harbour, Bovisand and South Devon locate the algae species on England’s South Coast, many of the names written here refer to the Scottish coasts and islands: Rothesay; Whiting Bay; Holy Island. The lengths to which the user went to obtain ‘very rare’ species of algae – assuming they were obtained by hand and not merely purchased – were not just geographical:
some samples have been ‘dredged from Plymouth harbour’. Whether the ‘dredging’ was carried out personally by the collector is doubtful, but it is nonetheless clear that the owner of this album was an extremely dedicated amateur phycologist, with some degree of knowledge. Some specimens are noted for their ‘fine colour’, ‘state of growth’ or for being ‘in fruit’.
Taxonomic accuracy is the main concern of this album, but the collector was nonetheless skilled in arranging his or her algae artistically, and most importantly making full use of the much larger space provided by this folio album, some of the specimens being very large indeed. These two albums form an attractive and exciting record of two seaweed collectors, probably when the pursuit was at the height of its popularity. Each album has its own character, the first being charmingly amateurish and artistic, the other a more hard-headed – though sadly unfinished – endeavour in collecting. See Logan, The Victorian Parlour, p. 124. 3. [ALGAE.] Brooch with algae, early twentieth century. Brooch, approximately 2 x 4 cm. overall; miniature reddish-pink algae specimen set in a light pink resin (1.2 x 1.2 cm.), in yellow metal decorative swirling design surround, functioning pin clasp. £120 An unusual example of jewellery design delicately preserving an algae; an attractive piece of botanical interest collecting.
4. [BIBLE – GOSPELS.] (ABU RUMI, translator, Thomas Pell PLATT, editor). Evangelia sancta: sub auspiciis D. Asselini rerum Gallicarum apud Aegyptios procuratoris in lunguam Amharicam vertit Abu-Rumi Habessinus. London, Richard Watts for the British and Foreign Bible Society, 1824. 4to, ff. [158], Latin title and facing title in Amharic (printed in red and black), text in Amharic printed in red and black; one or two minor stains; contemporary blind-stamped calf; worn and rubbed, foot of spine chipped; from the library of Archibald Smith-Sligo (1815–1891), with bookplate. £800
First edition of the Gospels in Amharic. The translation was made by the Ethiopian monk Abu Rumi (c. 1750–c. 1819). Following extensive travels in the Middle East and India, Abu Rumi found himself, aged 50–55, in Cairo. He fell ill there but was nursed back to health by the French consul, Jean-Louis Asselin de Cherville, who persuaded him to translate the Bible into Amharic. The two of them worked on the translation every Tuesday and Saturday for the next ten years (1808–1818). On completion, Asselin contacted the English missionary William Jowett of the Church Missionary Society and the Foreign Bible Society in Cairo, who purchased the 9539-page manuscript for £1250 in 1820. The manuscript was then submitted to the Orientalist Professor Samuel Lee of Cambridge before being prepared for publication by Thomas Pell Platt, Fellow of Trinity College and for several years librarian of the British and Foreign Bible Society. The Gospels appeared first, in 1824, the New Testament in 1829, and the full Bible in 1840. The latter remained the standard Amharic Bible until the Imperial Bible sponsored by Haile Selassie and published in 1960–1.
Darlow & Moule 1556. WITH FOUR ORIGINAL PLAYBILLS 5. BOADEN, James. Memoirs of the Life of John Philip Kemble, Esq. including a History of the Stage, from the Time of Garrick to the present Period … In two Volumes. London, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1825. 2 vols., 8vo, pp. xl, 477, [1]; [4], 595, [1], with a mezzotint frontispiece portrait of Kemble by C. Turner after Thomas Lawrence; extra-illustrated with 27 engraved portraits and 4 playbills (1796-8); a very good copy in later nineteenth-century half calf, front joint of volume II detached. £625
First edition of a fine, discursive theatrical biography by the playwright turned biographer James Boaden; Walter Scott called it ‘grave, critical, full and laudably accurate’. After a brief early career writing gothic and historical dramas for the stage, and a bold but misguided endorsement of William Ireland’s Shakespeare forgery, Vortigern, Boaden wrote nothing after 1803 for twenty-one years, before a drastic loss of means drove him to a second career as biographer. He succeeded his life of Kemble with similar works on Mrs Siddons (1827), Mrs Jordan (1831), and Mrs Inchbald (1833). The present copy of the Memoirs is extra-illustrated with four playbills for Drury Lane productions starring Kemble and Siddons: The Gamester, 17 Oct 1796; Measure for Measure, 11 Jan 1797; Tamerlane, 2 March 1797; and The Stranger, 4 May 1798. The 27 additional portraits are mostly of Kemble and Siddons, 1780s-1860s, including some in character (as Hamlet, Rolla, etc.). EARLY PROTESTANT PRAYER-BOOK
6. BRUNFELS, Otto. Precationes Biblicae sanctoru[m] patrum, illustrium viroru[m] et mulierum utriusq[ue] Testamenti. Strasbourg, Johannes Schott, 1528. 8vo, ff. [viii], 91, [1], title printed in black and red within chiaroscuro woodcut border also printed in black and red and attributed to Hans Weiditz, woodcut on A8v, text and colophon all within wide woodcut borders of children playing, hunting and satirical scenes, trophies, grotesques, plants, animals, insects and so on (these also attributed to Hans Weiditz), woodcut device on final leaf; a few minor tears, spots and stains, but a very good copy in modern vellum with red morocco spine labels; old Quaritch description (c. 1970s) loosely inserted. £6000
First edition, rare. The earliest Protestant prayer-books, of which this is perhaps the most notable example, often comprised prayers taken directly from (or adapted from) the Bible. Brunfels’s Precationes Biblicae appeared in the same year in German translation (Biblisch Bettbüchlein der Altvätter und herrlichen Weibern, beyd Alts und Newes Testaments) and was translated into several other languages including English (Prayers of the Byble, published by Robert Redman in 1535). Brunfels (c. 1488–1534) entered the Carthusian monastery in Strasbourg after graduating MA in 1508. In 1521 he left the monastery and the Catholic faith. He opened a school in Strasbourg in 1524 and ‘soon demonstrated his interest in medicine by editing and translating various older medical texts and by writing one of the earliest medical bibliographies, the Catalogus (1530)’ (DSB). His celebrated botanical work Herbarum vivae eicones appeared in 1530 and 1532; in the latter year he graduated MD at Basel. The woodcut borders are ‘evidently by Hans Weiditz, who also illustrated the same author’s Herbal 1530–2, in which the artist’s name is given. In one of the borders is represented a fox in monkish garb (?Tetzel) selling indulgences to several geese; the treasure-chest and papal standard (?) at back. Children’s toys and noise-making instruments are shewn in another border. This appears to be one of the earliest publications of Brunfels and is very little known’ (Fairfax Murray). The chiaroscuro woodcut title border depicts Hezekiah being healed by Isaiah. Adams P2071; Fairfax Murray 100. OCLC locates only two copies in the UK (British Library and National Art Library) and one in the US (Yale). COPAC adds a copy at the Bodleian.
‘SHAKESPEARE’ AND EDWARD III, SIGNED BY THE EDITOR 7. CAPELL, Edward, editor. Prolusions; or select Pieces of antient Poetry,– compil’d with great Care from their several Originals, and offer’d to the Publick as Specimens of the Integrity that should be found in the Editions of worthy Authors. London, J. and R. Tonson, 1760. 8vo, pp. [8], xi, [1], 23, [1], 23, [1], 13, [3], 93, [15], 81, [7], with two initial and two terminal blanks; a good copy in contemporary speckled calf, front joint cracked but just holding; armorial bookplate of Joseph Harford. £450 First edition, the ‘manifesto’ of ‘the first modern editor of Shakespeare’; in this copy, as in one traced at the British Library, the dedication to Lord Willoughby, normally left anonymous, has been signed by the editor ‘E. Capell’. Capell’s edition of Shakespeare’s plays (1767-8) was the first produced directly from the texts of the original quartos and folios. Prolusions, which contains ‘The Notbrowne Mayde’, Edward III (attributed by Capell to Shakespeare), and other pieces of poetry, was published several years before as an exemplar of editorial practice. Capell frequently anticipates modern scholarly procedures: lists of ‘Various Readings’ make the reader aware of ‘every departure’ from the copy text, and he lists the editions consulted. He also introduces some amusing typographical eccentricities: a full stop level with the top of the line denotes irony, and a cross indicates that a character is pointing to something.
The book was one of the first printed on James Whatman’s newly invented wove paper.
ESTC does not mention the initial or terminal blanks (A1-2 and S3-4); ESTC also calls for an additional blank leaf after the each of the two sections paginated 23, though in fact the signatures here are continuous. Are there perhaps several issues?
JESUIT-INSPIRED EMBLEMS BY CALLOT 8. [CALLOT, Jacques, and François RENNEL.] Vie de la mere de Dieu representée par emblesmes. [Nancy, Antoine Charlot, c. 1628–9]. 4to, ff. [iv], 26, etched Latin title below letterpress title in French, with 26 emblematic etchings by Callot printed on rectos only, heading above each in Latin and a Latin distich and its translation into a French quatrain below; a few spots and some light soiling on title, one or two isolated spots elsewhere, neat repair in blank lower margin of E1, but an excellent copy in late nineteenthcentury red morocco gilt, gilt edges, by Rivière. £5500 First edition of this beautiful emblem book, one of two illustrated by Callot (the other being Lux claustri). The etchings are here in the first state, without numbering. Paulette Choné convincingly established the place of printing, printer and date of the work, and also identified François Rennel as the author of the text (the initials ‘F. R.’ appear at the end of the preface; see P. Choné, Emblèmes et pensée symbolique en Lorraine (1525–1633), Paris, 1991, p. 725 ff.). The Vie de la mere de Dieu, with its allusive Marian symbolism showing the influence of Maximilian van der Sandt (Sandaeus), should therefore be seen in the context of lay Jesuitinspired observation in Nancy: ‘Sandaeus’s Theologia Symbolica, or his small series of sermons expounding comparisons of the Virgin with flowers, precious stones, mountains, stars and birds, were the companion books of the Jesuits who directed the pious laity in their confraternities. François Rennel, who conceived Callot’s emblem books, and Callot himself, were influential members of such a Jesuit congregation in Nancy.
‘The first works by Sandaeus must have made a vivid impact; his inspiration, his sophisticated poetry and metaphorical vocabulary show a close affinity to the extreme delicacy of the Vie de la mere de Dieu and Lux claustri’ (P. Choné, ‘Lorraine and Germany’ in The German-language emblem in its European context: exchange and transmission, Glasgow Emblem Studies 5, ed. A. J. Harper and I. Höpel, pp. 1–22 at pp. 5–6). Vie de la mere de Dieu subsequently appeared in an undated but closely similar Nancy edition, François Langlois’s Paris edition of 1646 in quarto, and Benoit Audran’s undated Paris edition in oblong octavo (Adams, Rawles & Saunders F.136, F.134 and F.135 respectively).
Provenance: Sir Henry Hope Edwardes, 10th Baronet (1829–1900), with his bookplate.
Adams, Rawles & Saunders F.137 (wrongly calling for headings in both Latin and French). See also Landwehr, Romanic 197, and Praz 294. OCLC records five locations in Europe (Bibliothèque nationale, Lyon, Paris Mazarine, Paris Sainte-Geneviève and Rome) and five in the US (Harvard, Huntington, Illinois, SMU and Stanford). Not found in COPAC.
METAPHYSICAL LECTURES 9. DELORME, D. ‘Delorme cursus philosophicus metaphysica’. Bourg-SaintAndéol, 1767. Manuscript in Latin on paper, 2 vols, small 4to; vol. I: pp. [6], 90 (i.e. 92), [105], [27, mostly blank], 222 (i.e. 223), [17 blank] (i.e. 470 pages); vol. II: [6], 203 (i.e. 204), 304-476, 478-504, 506-522, [35 blank] (i.e. 462 pages); two handdrawn folding plates to vol. I, decorative coloured title-pages to each part and other occasional decorative elements including initials, very neatly written in brown ink in a single hand with very few corrections, manuscript certificate pasted to front flyleaf of vol. II; in excellent condition; bound in contemporary mottled calf, spines gilt in compartments with lettering-pieces, red edges, marbled endpapers; small losses at head and foot of spines, some wear to joints, corners and boards. £1850 A very attractive unpublished manuscript recording a course of philosophical lectures given by D. Delorme, a graduate of the University of Valence and a philosophy professor at the seminary of Bourg-Saint-Andéol in southern France, written out by his student Joseph Maria Gibert, of nearby Uzès, during the academic year 1766 to 1767, in the traditional form of propositions, objections and solutions, questions and answers. That Gibert was a diligent student is attested by a manuscript certificate pasted into the second volume, signed by Delorme and witnessed by ten of his faculty, stating that Gibert had attended Delorme’s lectures ‘sedulo et attente auribus ac scriptis’. At several points within the manuscript Delorme has marked his approval of Gibert’s notes with ‘vidi et probavi Delorme prof. Regius’.
The first part of Delorme’s course is devoted to ontology, the nature of being and existence, which Gibert has illustrated with two folding plates, the first showing the ‘arbor Porphiriana’ (Tree of Porphyry), and the second the ‘arbor Purchotii’, the tree of categories based on Descartes designed by the Paris professor Edme Pourchot (1651-1734). In the next part, Delorme tackles ethics, considering, among other topics, human action, good and evil, motive, happiness, consciousness, ignorance, fear, desire, freedom, virtues and vices, wisdom, courage (including discussion of war and duels), justice, and indifference. This section on ‘Ethyca seu philosophia moralis’ concludes with consideration of man’s duties towards God, his fellow man, his family, and the state, the role of spouses and parents and masters and slaves, and the duties of priests, magistrates and judges. The opinions of Thomists, Scotists, and Cartesians are all considered, and reference made to, for example, Cicero, Chrysostom, and Peter of Blois. The second volume is devoted to ‘Pneumatologia’ i.e. to consideration of God. Here Delorme examines arguments for the existence of God, including Descartes’, discusses atheistic systems including Epicurus and the atomists, and considers innate ideas of God and the infinite, God’s unity, uniqueness and attributes, creation, angels, the human mind and reason, and the immortality of the soul, tackling along the way the various theories of Berkeley, Spinosa, Hobbes, Malebranche, Leibniz, and Antoine Arnaud.
FRANKLIN’S FRENCH BESTSELLER 10. [FRANKLIN, Benjamin]. La science du bonhomme Richard, ou moyen facile de payer les impôts. Traduit de l’Anglois. ‘A Philadelphie et se trouve a Paris, chez Ruault’ [probably printed in Paris], 1777. 12mo, pp. 151, [1], 4 (‘livres qui se trouvent chez le même libraire’); title vignette and attractive engraved head- and tail-pieces; occasional light spotting, part of blue wrapper adhered to lower inner corner of half-title; a very good uncut copy in contemporary blue wrappers, remains of paper spine labels; some loss at foot of spine, upper joint fragile. £850
Scarce first edition of the enormously successful and frequently reprinted French translation of Franklin’s The Way to Wealth by François-Antoine Quétant and Jean-Baptiste Lécuy. Franklin’s strictures on idleness, pride and folly first appeared in Poor Richard’s Almanac in 1758, being issued separately for the first time in 1760. The first French version was undertaken by Jacques Barbeu Du Bourg but this had nothing like the impact of Quétant’s translation. ‘There are several possible reasons why Bonhomme Richard became the most widely read American work in France: in 1777 the American Revolution had already broken out, and Bonhomme Richard symbolized the just man who was both morally and materially satisfied; Quétant’s translation was more free, using language aimed at the common man; and above all there was the fact that Franklin had returned to Paris in December 1776 as a colonial envoy sent to obtain French support for the Revolution, and had been hailed as a hero of democracy ... Franklin ... and his Bonhomme Richard became the symbols of the dignity and industriousness of the new republic’ (M. Albertone, National Identity and the Agrarian Republic, Routledge 2016, pp. 128-9).
This translation also contains the text of the examination of Franklin before the British Parliament in 1766 (translated by Dupont de Nemours), of the constitution of Pennsylvania as established in July 1776, and of the examination of Mr Penn by the House of Lords in November 1776. ESTC W41782, recording only 2 copies in the UK (British Library and Leeds) and 7 in the US; Ford 113. This edition not in Einaudi, Goldsmiths’, Kress, or Sabin.
11. GIBBON, Edward. Essai sur l’étude de la littérature. A Londres [i.e. Paris?], et se trouve à Paris chez Duchesne … 1762. 12mo, pp. xlvii, 168, 145-178; tear through title-page neatly repaired, else a very good, crisp copy in contemporary tree sheep, flat spine gilt and lettered direct, front joint cracked, head of spine chipped. £600 Second (first Paris) edition of the great historian’s first work, written in his adopted second language and dedicated to his father. Here the dedication is translated into French (Gibbon had called the mix of languages in the first edition ‘preposterous’). The Essai was written in 1758-9, and published by Becket and de Hondt in London, but ‘the book was more successful abroad than in England’. An English translation, not entirely felicitous, was published in 1764. Much more uncommon than the first, the present edition is recorded in 10 copies in ESTC (Library Company of Philadelphia and Yale only in North America). Norton 3.
THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS BY AN AMATEUR ASTROLOGER AND PHRENOLOGIST 12. ‘CASSIEL’ (i.e. Richard GOOCH). Memoirs, remarkable Vicissitudes, military Career, and Wanderings in Ireland; mechanical and astronomical Exercises, scientific Researches, Incidents and Opinions of Cassiel, the Norfolk Astrologer, written by Himself. Norwich, Thorndick and Co., 1844.
[bound with:] GOOCH, R[ichard]. The Dreamer’s Casket, or Oneirocracy made easy. Royal Edition improved. [Norwich], Thorndick & Co., 1850. [and with:] GOOCH, Richard. The Victoria Gem, or Philosophy of Dreams, under the Astro-Selene System, or Lunar Influence. Second Edition. Norwich, Thorndick & Co., 1847. [and with:] GOOCH, R[ichard]. The Young Lady’s and Gentleman’s Phrenological Manual, or Sure Guide to early Friendship, Sociality, and Courtship. Norwich, B. Norman, [c. 1850]. Four works, 12mo, bound together: pp. 97, [1], with a frontispiece and several illustrations; pp. 96, with one engraved plate; pp. 96, with a folding plate (‘Selenarium’, volvelle wanting); and pp. 56, with an engraved frontispiece. Some spotting and staining, multiple pin-pricks to p. 86 in The Dreamer’s Casket (see below), else a good copy in modern brown half morocco, gilt, contemporary ownership inscriptions of W. Cracknell, Norwich, with a manuscript poem imploring borrowers to return the book ‘with the corners of leaves not turned down’; ex libris R.C. Fiske, his bookplates. £850
A fine collection of the rare and curious works of Richard Gooch, or ‘Cassiel, the Norfolk Astrologer’. Gooch (b. 1784) was a self-taught practitioner of astrology, ‘oneirocracy’ [dream-reading] and phrenology as well as a tinsmith and a maker of optical instruments. In his Memoirs, Gooch describes the beginnings of his fascination with the pseudo-scientific in the phenomena of his Norfolk childhood, its jack-o-lanterns and mushroom fairy rings. An unwanted stint as a Grenadier in the East Norfolk militia 1807-1812 takes Gooch to Ireland, where he twice sees the ‘great Comet of 1811’, before returning to Norfolk to build a planetarium and a camera obscura. From the astrology of Memoirs he progresses to dream-science in The Dreamer’s Casket, physiognomy in The Victoria Gem, and full-blown phrenology in the Phrenological Manual. The Dreamer’s Casket includes a dictionary of dream-objects with their interpretations (elephants and oysters = good; gypsies and marriage = bad), as well as a ‘Uranian alphabet’ – an oracular device consulted by use of a pin and a blindfold (heavily used here). The Victoria Gem contains a dictionary, an astrological explanation of the influence of the moon, essays on sign language and secret writing etc. The physiognomic ideas of these earlier works form the basis for the Phrenological Manual, which gives the reader instructions for making a successful marriage. Unsurprisingly perhaps, quackery prevails, and at the end of the Manual Gooch intersperses home remedies, magic charms and poetry with advertisements for his own dubious tinctures and ointments; in one of these, worryingly, is the woodcut of two mushrooms from the fairy ring in Memoirs.
A man singularly beset by misfortune, Gooch records the deaths of three wives and eight sons; his only surviving daughter, Susannah Smith, was an early daguerreotypist, exhibiting in 1852-3, though no examples survive. All works are interspersed with occasional poetry. All very rare. There is a similar assembly-volume at Norfolk Central Library. COPAC lists copies of The Victoria Gem and The Phrenological Manual at the British Library and only later editions of Memoirs and the Dreamer’s Casket.
13. [GRIFFIN, Steven?]. The American juvenile pictorial primer and first step to learning, carefully arranged on a new, simple, and interesting principle. New York, Edward Dunigan & Brother, 1852. 8vo, pp. 24; with many woodcut illustrations throughout; leaves at front and back detached; wormhole to first leaf, with loss of text; some light spotting but woodcuts in good condition; disbound. £150 Second edition of this very rare Primer, first published in 1843. Griffin’s name is associated with several works for the education of children in matters of religious virtue and American patriotism. Both are condensed into this little pamphlet, charmingly illustrated throughout with woodcuts of animals and pastoral scenes. Beginning with the alphabet, the child then moves through a series of two-letter, three- and four-letter words, printed beneath a fairly imaginative pictorial alphabet, before graduating to numbers. Griffin’s ‘simple principle’, it seems, is to introduce increasingly complex words by dividing them into the two-letter syllables learnt at the beginning of the pamphlet, a process accompanied by a wonderful assortment of comically banal poems and stories, always illustrated with delightful vignettes. Griffin’s evangelical objectives are revealed at times, accompanied always by innocent illustrations of animals, like the wolf who steals the shepherd’s sheep: ‘But who is the shepherd’s Shepherd? Who ta-keth care for him! God is the shep-herd over all, he tak-eth care of all.’ The pamphlet finishes in a similarly high-minded tone with a stern portrait of George Washington and a mourning woman lamenting over his grave. Children should always follow Washington’s example: ‘a candid confession of your faults will always ensure your forgiveness, and be received
as an earnest of your reformation.’ Griffin certainly expects his pupils to have learnt a great deal since they began their ABCs! OCLC lists only two copies worldwide of this edition, National Library of Ireland and Ball State University, and two copies of the first edition; neither is recorded on COPAC.
JANSENIST SAMMELBAND 14. [GUDVER, Nicolas]. ‘La constitution Unigenitus de notre tres saint pere le pape Clement XI contre le livre des Reflexions Morales sur le Nouv. Test. du P. Q. avec des remarques’. [France, c.1723].
Manuscript on paper, 8vo, pp. [96]; very neatly written in red and brown ink, occasional corrections; a few tiny holes to second leaf. [bound with:] NOAILLES, Louis-Antoine de. Acte d’appel de son eminence monseigneur le Cardinal de Noailles, archevêque de Paris du 3 Avril 1717 au pape mieux conseillé et au futur concile général, de la constitution de N. S. P. le pape Clement XI du 8 Septembre 1713. [N.p., n.p., 1717]. 12mo, pp. 24. [and:] [ANON]. Instruction familiere au sujet de la constitution Unigenitus. Seconde edition, revûe, corrigée & augmentée. [N.p., n.p., 1719]. 8vo, pp. 3-110, [2 (errata and blank)], without title leaf. Very good copies bound in a contemporary binding reusing a fragment from a 15th-century(?) liturgical manuscript; some staining to upper cover, small wormhole at foot of spine; an attractive volume. £1100
A handsome contemporary manuscript version of Abbé Nicolas Gudver’s La constitution Unigenitus avec des remarques et des notes, attacking Clement XI’s 1713 bull ‘Unigenitus’ which had condemned 101 propositions in Pasquier Quesnel’s Réflexions morales sur le Nouveau Testament as Jansenist and heretical. Gudver (d. 1737) was curate of Saint-Pierre-le-Vieil, and his work appeared in print in several editions and clearly circulated in manuscript too. After presenting the text of the bull and his accompanying remarks in two columns, Gudver analyses each of the 101 condemned propositions with reference to the scriptures and the Church Fathers, ending with a satirical ‘Profession de foy formée sur la condamnation des 101 propositions’, beginning ‘Je crois en Dieu le Pere qui n’est pas assez puissant pour sauver une ame quand il le veut’.
Our manuscript is bound with two rare printed works written against ‘Unigenitus’, the first by the French archbishop and cardinal Noailles, who refused to accept the bull until 1728, shortly before his death. The anonymous Instruction familiere, composed in question and answer format, stresses the importance of engaging in the debate around ‘cette grande affaire’, condemns the excommunication of the bull’s opponents (‘quel crime horrible’), defends Quesnel and Noailles and attacks the Jesuits, but ends with an appeal to keep peace ‘avec ceux qui nous persécutent’. II. COPAC finds a single copy in the British Library; no US copies on OCLC. III. No copies on COPAC; OCLC finds copies at Harvard, Boston, and Texas.
JANSENISM, LUTHERANISM, JESUITS, AND HOMOSEXUALITY 15. DUTCH RELIGIOUS BROADSIDES. Netherlands, c. 1700-1766.
An interesting and diverse collection of seven scarce Dutch religious broadsides, six with engraved illustrations, relating to: the crucifixion; accusations of Jansenism against Petrus Codde (1648-1710), archbishop of Utrecht; Lutheranism in Poland; the execution of the Mayor of Thorn and nine Lutheran officials on 7 December 1724 (against the Jesuits); punishments for homosexuality and sodomy; the torture, execution and posthumous exoneration of the Protestant Jean Calas (1698-1762) for the murder of his son, a case in which Voltaire famously intervened; and the power, compassion, and majesty of God. £700
3. Confessie van de Koning van Poolen. Samenspraak tusschen Lutherus en de Roomschen Paus ... De prys is 12 duyte. [N.p., n.p., 1706?]. 330 x 215 mm; engraving of Luther and the Pope at head, 20 lines of verse; creases where once folded, some spotting and dust soiling. Not on OCLC, one copy traced at the Library of Congress.
1. Pilatus schreef een opschrift. Joannes XIX. vers XIX. Jesus de Nazareener de Koning der Joodern. Anagramma of letter-versetting: Sondaar reken sijn dood u een diere zegen. [N.p.], Gedrukt voor den autheur, 1700. 445 x 315 mm; engraving of the crucifixion by G. vander Gouwen after O. Elliger at head, engraved initial, text signed ‘P.P. I.D.’, references to Biblical passages at the end of each line of text, slip of paper bearing additional text in manuscript pasted at foot; some loss to blank right-hand upper edge (old paper repair to blank verso), a few marks. Not on OCLC. 2. Rym regelen, op de bovenstaande Print, of afbeeldzel. [N.p., n.p., 1705?]. 315 x 250 mm; engraving of medallion at head (portrait of Petrus Codde to one side, emblematic design including papal palace, lion of Holland, and lamb to other side), two columns of text; tipped onto card, small repair to bottom corner. Not on OCLC.
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4. De bloeddorst der Jesuiten, vertoond in het onderdrukken der Poolse Kerk, met de yszelyke uitwerkzelen der Roomse Gestelyken, verbeeld by het bloedbad van Thoorn, den 7den van Wintermaand, 1724. [N.p., n.p., c. 1725]. 395 x 540 mm; central emblematic engraving with two columns of explanatory text either side; central vertical crease reinforced on blank verso, small loss at blank top right corner, a few marks. Two copies on OCLC (Koninklijke Bibliotheek and Erasmus University Rotterdam). 5. TYSENS, Gysbert. Tydelyke straffe voorgesteld ten afschrik aller goddeloze en doemwaardige zondaren. [N.p., n.p., c. 1730]. 430 x 330 mm; 6 numbered vignettes at head, explained in two columns of text below signed G. Tysens; tipped onto card. OCLC finds copies at Yale, Texas, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, and the University of Amsterdam, with imprint ‘Amsterdam, Gerrit Bos and Gerrit Bouman’.
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6. De Ongelukkige Familie Van Calas. De Moeder, de Twee Dochters, met Jeanne Viguiere, haar Dienstmaagd, de Zoon en zyn vriend de jonge La Vaisse. Amsterdam, Gerrit Bom, 1766. 545 x 340 mm; engraving of the Calas family after L.C. de Carmontelle at head, engraved initial, text in two columns signed ‘W. Ockers’; some creasing, edges reinforced on blank verso. Only the BnF copy on OCLC.
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7. Het Volmaakt Gebedt. Matth. Cap. VI. vs. 9-13, en Luc. XI. vs. 1-4. Amsterdam, Gerrit Bom, [n.d.].
16. HAZLITT, William. Political essays with sketches of public characters. London, William Hone, 1819.
500 x 415 mm; two columns of text signed ‘N.G.R.’, each line with a Biblical reference either side; repair to central crease on blank verso, a little creased at head, two light stains. Not on OCLC.
8vo, pp. xxxvi, 439, [1] blank; some very light browning, but a very good copy, uncut and unopened in the original green cloth, paper lettering-piece on the spine, yellow paste-downs; corners bumped, spine extremities a little rubbed; early ownership inscription (F. English, Stamford, 1840); from the collection of the bibliophile Hans Fellner. £550 First edition, in an unusual binding, of one of Hazlitt’s most interesting collections, including his reviews of Southey as Poet Laureate, of Coleridge, Burke, Napoleon (one of Hazlitt’s favourite characters) and (at length) of Malthus. The bibliographer Keynes does not mention copies bound in cloth.
Keynes 49.
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TWO NATURAL ARTISTS OF THE MICROSCOPIC 17. HAECKEL, Ernst. KunstFormen der Natur. Leipzig, Bibliographisches Institut, 1904. Folio, pp. [15], [200], 51, [1]; 100 plates, many in colour; tracing paper to some plates with numbers and outlines; publisher’s green illustrated cloth, spine and upper cover; joints fragile; marbled edges, patterned endpapers; inscription to front free endpaper; slightly stained throughout, else a very good copy, plates in excellent condition. £3500
Second edition. Haeckel is considered one of the great illustrators of the natural world, a Gould, Audubon or Swainson. His enthusiasm was not for large birds or quadrupeds but for microscopic forms. In this he rode on the tails of scientific advancement, namely the voyage of the Challenger in 18731876, ‘the forerunner of a series of [British] government-sponsored voyages to explore the deep sea’, (Dance) for which Haeckel produced illustrated reports. The deep-sea life brought to light by this voyage and others gave Haeckel his ideal subjects: ‘Haeckel was privileged to view under the microscope some of the loveliest and most spectacular of all natural objects, the radiolarians, whose tiny skeletons occur in countless myriads on the sea floor. In his Challenger reports and other scientific papers, his artistic and scientific gifts were crystallised superbly. Each plate was filled with illustrations of the astonishingly beautiful, symmetrically organised, incredibly delicate yet durable remains of these lovely organisms. The infinitesimally small have never been displayed with greater sensitivity and delicacy than by Haeckel. In his Kunstformen der Natur, a popular, illustrated exposition of the animal morphology of animals throughout the animal kingdom, he showed to perfection the immense variety of forms assumed by different animal groups
and brought to each of his designs the same dedication and love which moved him to make such exquisite artistic memorials to the beauty of radiolarians.’ (Dance)
18. BLOSSFELDT, Karl. Art Forms in Nature. London, Zwemmer, 1929. The plates range from black and white to deep reds and pale blues, full-page and full-colour, highly detailed chromolithograph illustrations of jellyfish, frogs and birds. Haeckel’s fondness for his subjects can be seen in the liveliness of these full-page compositions and of his organisms: laughing bats and disgruntled toads. Each of the one hundred plates is accompanied by a page of text, describing each of the several species that appear on the plate. Attractive printed tissue paper is used on some of the plates to outline each specimen and denote their number. This is a fine and complete edition of Haeckel’s popular work, first published in instalments, and includes the supplement at the end with taxonomical tables and an essay on various groups. The book is inscribed with five names, presumably belonging to a group of scientist colleagues. In German, the inscription quotes the Swiss botanist Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777): ‘No created spirit penetrates the inner essence of nature. Happy whom she shows the outer shell.’ The inscription continues: ‘A friendly token of remembrance of hours of common work.’ Haeckel’s illustrations proved popular with the public and were also to influence generations of artists including the Surrealists, notably Max Ernst, and the photographer Karl Blossfeldt. (Brody) See S. Peter Dance, The History of Shell Collecting p. 152 and The Art of Natural History, pp. 186-189; David Brody, “Ernst Haeckel and the microbial baroque”, Cabinet, 7, Summer 2002.
Large 4to, pp. xv, 120 numbered photogravure plates; publisher’s green cloth, very slightly stained and worn, gilt spine and upper cover; slight foxing to terminal endpapers, some transfer of ink from plates to blank versos, a few corners folded; else a very good copy, plates in excellent condition. £850 First edition in English of Blossfeldt’s Urformen der Kunst (1928), a seminal work of micro-photography and ‘one of the most striking books in photographic history’, (Parr & Badger) produced as a textbook for Blossfeldt’s course on natural sculpture at the Kunstgewerbemuseum, Berlin. The 120 plates show enlargements of plants and plant matter, with the enlargement of each plate given in the contents. Blossfeldt (1865-1932) never received formal photographic training, instead developing at home cameras capable of enlarging small seeds and shoots by up to thirty times.
This was a significant development, and in his preface here Karl Nierendorf emphasises the singular nature of Blossfeldt’s process: he made no other interference with the images, they are simply magnifications. The influence of Haeckel is evident in the idea that microscopy could reveal nature’s artistic forms, purified by Blossfeldt’s abstraction of ferns, seeds and flowers through magnification alone. The magnifying power of Blossfeldt’s camera, Nierendorf argues, places it alongside film cameras and other technologies in a new wave of ‘technics’, at that time destroying the rift between man and nature. Nierendorf (1889-1947), a native of Cologne like Blossfeldt, was an art dealer there and in New York. His language is wonderfully evocative of the epoch: ‘a new type of man emerges, a free being, rejoicing in healthy exercise, intimately acquainted with the elements air and water, tanned by the sun, and resolved to open out for himself a new and brighter world.’ Nierendorf ’s claim that ‘the motor car annihilates space between the town and the country’ might hold an unfortunate double meaning for modern eyes, but Blossfeldt’s view of nature remains striking. The contemporary avant-garde of Cologne saw his Pflanzenbilder as ‘superficially aestheticizing’, but the fact of their artificial enlargement and the ‘formal language’ of their construction would provoke responses from the Surrealists, and Blossfeldt’s photographs are now recognised as key elements of the Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) movement in modern European photography. (Grove Art)
FIRST AMERICAN EDITION OF POPE’S ILIAD 19. HOMER (Alexander POPE, translator). The Iliad of Homer. Translated from the Greek by Alexander Pope, Esq. Philadelphia, for J. Crukshank, W. Young, M. Carey, H. & P. Rice, T. Dobson, J. Ormrod, J. McCulloch, P. Stuart, 1795. 12mo, pp. 484; some small stains and marks, else a very good copy in contemporary sheep, red morocco spine label; upper joint cracked but firm, some wear to spine and corners, a few abrasions to boards; inscriptions of James Carmalt (1812) and C. Carmalt jnr (1815) to front free endpaper, remains of red wax seals to pastedowns, cancelled bookplate of University of Chicago Library. £850 First American edition of Pope’s rendering of the Iliad. Pope began his reinterpretation of Homer’s epic poem when in his early twenties. Following several years of ‘great pain and apprehensions’, as Pope drafted his text on the backs of letters sent to him and his mother (now preserved in the British Library), his sumptuous six-volume edition was published between 1715 and 1720 by Bernard Lintot, with subscribers paying a guinea a piece. The Iliad, and his later Odyssey, established Pope’s fortune and enhanced his fame, prompting him to later write, ‘But (thanks to Homer) since I live and thrive, Indebted to no Prince or Peer alive’. ‘The ‘Homer’ was long regarded as a masterpiece, and for a century was the source from which clever schoolboys like Byron learnt that Homer was not a mere instrument of torture invented by their masters. No translation of profane literature has ever occupied such a position’ (DNB).
In contrast with the first Lintot edition, the first American edition is a charmingly simple rendering of Pope’s text, in a convenient format. Evans 28852; ESTC W12843. COPAC notes only 2 copies in the UK (Liverpool and London Library).
EARLY ALGERIAN IMPRINT 20. IBN ’ĀSHIR, ‘Abd-al-Wāḥid Ibn Aḥmad, and Yaḥyā Ibn-‘Umar alQURṬUBĪ. [Arabic title:] Naẓm Ibn ’Āshir wa-al-Qurṭubī fī qawā’id al-Islām al-khams. [French title:] Les Ned’mou de Ebnou A’chir et de El K’ortobi. Deux traités en vers, destinés à répandre l’usage des livres imprimés chez les Arabes. Edités par Si Salah el A’nteri. Constantine, F. Guende, February 1846. 4to, pp. [i], 45, lithographed Arabic text; some pale foxing, but a good copy, partly unopened in the original pale green printed wrappers with title in Arabic on upper cover and in French on lower cover; slightly dust-soiled, edges very slightly chipped, old shelf-number in blue crayon in corner of lower cover. £375 An early Algerian imprint, designed, according to the French title, ‘to expand the use of printed books among the Arabs’. The first text here is Ibn ’Ashir’s poem on Mālikī fiqh Al-Murshid al-Mu’in, still a primary text for learning Islam in North Africa. The second text is al-Qurtubī’s poem on Muslim religious observances, the Urdjūzat al-wildān, also known as al-Muḳaddima al-Ḳurṭubiyya. This short work ‘sets out in summary form the basic observances of the five “Pillars of Islam” in rhyming couplets designed to be easy for children to memorise, but the contents of the poem are in no way simplified for the juvenile reader’ (Encyclopaedia of Islam). Al-Qurtubi (1093–1172) was a poet and Mālikī jurist. OCLC records copies at the Bibliothèque nationale, Leiden, Princeton, and the University of Utah only.
21. LAFFI, Domenico. Viaggio in Levante al Santo Sepolcro di N. S. G. Christo, et altri luoghi de Terra Santa. Bologna, Heirs of Antonio Pisarri, 1683. Small 8vo, pp. [xvi], 576, woodcut head- and tail-pieces, with a full-page woodcut of a monk embracing the True Cross on p. [xvi]; occasional light foxing or browning, but a good copy; early nineteenth-century Italian sheepbacked boards, spine gilt and with red morocco lettering-piece; lightly rubbed, joints slightly cracked, head and foot of spine a little chipped; nineteenthcentury armorial bookplate with legend in Greek ‘Megas didaskalos tou en Elladi tektonikou tagmatos’. £1750
Scarce first edition of this detailed account of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land undertaken in 1678–9. The author, a priest, left Bologna on 1 October 1678 and sailed from Leghorn to Corsica. Thence he sailed to Sardinia, along the coasts of Algeria and Tunisia, to Malta, Crete and Cyprus before landing at Tripoli. His itinerary then took him to Byblos, Beirut, Sidon, Tyre, Acre, Nazareth, Sebastia, Nablus, Shechem, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Jaffa, Jericho, Hebron and Mount Lebanon. He returned to Leghorn via Cyprus. Tobler accurately describes the work as useful but inelegantly written. Laffi (b. 1636, date of death unknown) also undertook at least three pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela; his accounts of these have been translated into English by James Hall as A journey to the West: the diary of a seventeenth-century pilgrim from Bologna to Santiago de Compostela (Primavera Pers, 1997). Röhricht 1178; Tobler p. 113. Not in Blackmer. Besides a handful of copies in European libraries, OCLC records three copies in the US (Harvard, Saint John’s University and UCLA).
ELIZABETHAN SCHOOL BOOK 22. OCLAND, Christopher. Anglorum praelia, ab Anno Domini. 1327. anno nimirum primo inclytissimi Principis Eduardi eius nominis tertii, usque ad Annu[m] Domini 1558. Carmine summatim perstricta. Item. De pacatissimo Angliae statu, imperante Elizabetha, compendiosa narratio . . . Hiis Alexandri Nevilli Kettum: tum propter argumenti similitudinem, tum propter orationis elegantiam adiunximus. London, Henry Bynneman for Ralph Newbery, 1582. Three parts in one volume, small 4to, ff. [64]; ff. [24 (last blank)]; pp. [xvi], 97, [7]; with a general title, and separate title pages to second and third parts; fullpage woodcut royal arms on verso of A3, woodcut initials and head- and tailpieces, woodcut printer’s device on all three titles; occasional minor waterstaining, paper flaw in one leaf (E1) with loss of catchword on recto and one letter on verso, but a good copy in seventeenth-century speckled calf decorated in blind; slightly rubbed, upper joint cracked at foot, later paper label on spine. £1200 First published in 1580, this is one of three closely similar 1582 editions of Ocland’s Anglorum proelia which add two works at the end: Ocland’s Eirēnarchia (a continuation of Anglorum proelia first published in 1582) and Alexander Neville’s account of the 1549 Norfolk rising, De furoribus Norfolciensium Ketto duce (first published in 1575). Ocland was master of the Queen Elizabeth grammar school in the parish of St. Olave, Southwark, and subsequently the grammar school at Cheltenham. Anglorum proelia is an historical poem recounting English triumphs in battle from Edward III to the accession of Elizabeth. ‘The quality of Ocland’s verse
and his patriotic treatment of England’s martial glory received commendation at court. When Anglorum proelia was reissued in 1582 with Eirēnarchia (and, in some editions, Alexander Neville’s Latin poem on Kett’s rebellion), it was prefixed by letters, signed by members of the privy council and the ecclesiastical high commission, commanding that the book should be taught in every grammar and free school within the kingdom. While it is unclear how far this injunction was carried out, the book’s influence can be traced in literary and historical works in Latin and the vernacular’ (Oxford DNB). Provenance: R. C. Fiske, with his bookplate and enclosed note stating that he acquired the book at Christie’s sale of 24 May 1989 and asserting that the volume comes from the library of Lord Walpole at Wolterton Hall, Norfolk. ESTC S113345.
GOLD AND SILVER MERCHANTS’ MANUAL 23. OUT, Sieuwert Jansz. Uytgerekende tafelen in’t gout en silver, gereduceert uyt marken troys, in marken fijns ... Van nieuws gecalculeert, vermeerdert en verbetert ... Nootsakelijck allen koopluyden, munte-meesters en anderen in’t goudt en silver handelende. Amsterdam, Marcus Willemsz Doornick, 1681. 4to, pp. [xii], 401, [1 blank]; handsome engraved title vignette, engraved initials, extensive tables; small ink stain to pp. 112-113, small closed tear to lower blank margin of Yy2; an excellent copy in contemporary Dutch vellum; a few marks. £1600 Rare corrected and enhanced edition (first 1651) of Out’s essential manual for gold and silver merchants in the golden age of the Dutch Republic when Dutch trade was at its height, dedicated to three chief commissioners of the Wisselbank of Amsterdam. Out worked as an assayer at the bank and was highly regarded for his expertise in this role. STCN 86559967X. We have only traced the BL and Harvard copies in the UK and US.
FAMOUS CASE OF FASTING 24. PORZIO, Simone. De puella Germanica, quae fere biennium vixerat sine cibo, potuq[ue]. Ad Paulum III pontificem maximum Simonis Portii disputatio. [N.p., n.p., n.d]. 4to, ff. 10; woodcut arms of Paul III to title, engraved initials; some small closed tears to title, a few tiny worm tracks, small hole to blank inner margin of last leaf, occasional light foxing, else a very good copy in 20th-century light brown wrappers (detached); bookplate of Van der Hoeven. £750 Scarce undated edition of Porzio’s investigation of a famous case of fasting. The ten-year-old German youth Margaret Weiss began fasting in 1540 and having survived almost two years without food and drink attracted the attention of Gerardus Bucoldianus, physician to the king of France, whose account of her, De puella quae sine cibo et potu vitam transigit, was published in 1542. Porzio (1496-1554), the Neapolitan philosopher, physician and contemporary of Pomponazzi, was intrigued, and this work was the result of his own consideration of the case. In it he examines whether Margaret could have survived on air alone, citing authorities including Aristotle, Simplicius, John Philoponus, Galen, Hippocrates, Averroes, al-Razi, and Avicenna. While he seeks to explain her feat of fasting, Porzio is sure of one thing: that Margaret will not survive long if she continues to abstain from nourishment. Porzio appears to have composed this work in 1542 since his dedication to pope Paul III mentions that four years have passed since his explanation of the natural causes surrounding the eruption of the Monte Nuovo near Pozzuoli in 1538. The first dated edition of the work was printed in Florence
by Lorenzo Torrentino in 1551; our edition would appear to predate this since it carries the arms of Paul III – who died in 1549 – on the title-page.
Adams P1963 (suggesting the imprint ‘Florence, L. Torrentinus, 1554?’). We have only traced copies at Cambridge University Library and the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
A FINELY-ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHY OF THE DISTINGUISHED DUTCH NAVAL COMMANDER 25. [TROMP, Cornelis.] Leven en bedryf van den vermaarden zeeheld Cornelis Tromp, Graaf van Sylliesburg, Ridder van den Olifant, Baronnet, &c. Lieutenant Admiraal Generaal van Holland en Westvriesland. Ondermengd met de voornaamste daaden van verscheidene andere zeehoofden, en voornaamentlijk met die van Marten Harpertsz. Tromp. Benevens een naauwkeurig verhaal van der Nederlanderen en hunner Bondgenooten Oorlogen, sedert den jaare1650. tegens verscheidene volkeren gevoerd. Amsterdam: for the author and sold by Timotheus ten Hoorn and Jakob van Beverwyk, 1692. 3 parts in one volume, 4to (190 x 150mm), pp. [4 (title, blank, preface)], 496, [8 (index)]; additional engraved title by Jan Luyken, engraved portrait frontispiece, 9 engraved plates by Luyken, B. Stoopendaal, and T. Doesburgh, 7 folding; historiated woodcut initials and tailpieces; some light spotting, some quires variably browned, 2 plates trimmed at lower edge touching caption; contemporary Dutch vellum over pasteboard, spine titled in ink by a contemporary hand, all edges speckled red; spine slightly darkened and manuscript title faded, a few light marks, boards slightly bowed, nonetheless a very good copy in a contemporary Dutch binding; traces of booklabel on front free endpaper. £1250 First edition. The distinguished Dutch naval commander Marten Harpertszoon Tromp (1597-1653) was the son of a Dutch naval officer and went to sea as a very young man, joining the Dutch navy in 1624 and rising to flag-rank in 1637.
He commanded the Dutch fleet through the first Anglo-Dutch War (16521654), until his death at the Battle of Scheveningen on 31 July 1653. His son Cornelis Martenszoon van Tromp (1629-1691) had served as a lieutenant on his father’s ship in 1645 and was promoted to captain in 1649; following gallant service in the First Anglo-Dutch War, he was promoted again to rearadmiral in 1653. In 1663 Tromp was appointed commander of the Dutch fleet in the Mediterranean, and then successively vice-admiral and commander-inchief of the Dutch fleet during the Second Anglo-Dutch War of 1665-1667. A rivalry and conflict with Admiral Michiel de Ruyter caused the withdrawal of Tromp’s commission, but Prince William III of Orange engineered a reconciliation between the two men and Tromp was restored to his previous position, becoming commander-in-chief once more after de Ruyter’s death in 1675 and ending his career as lieutenant admiral general of the republic.
This biography was published the year after Tromp’s death and (following a very brief sketch of his youth) it provides a chronological narrative of his life from 1650 until his death. Not only does it cover Tromp’s service in the European theatres of war, it also discusses actions in the Americas, such as the surrender of New Netherland and its capital Manhattan in 1664 (the articles of capitulation are printed on pp. 228-231) and the seizure by the Dutch of the English colony of Surinam in 1667 (p. 375). The work is illustrated with finely-engraved prints of naval battles and other scenes, four of which are by one of the most renowned Dutch book-illustrators of the era, the artist and author Jan Luyken (1649-1712), who contributed the allegorical additional title, which depicts Tromp’s mastery of the sea and victories; an engraving of Marten Tromp’s tomb; an engraving showing the title of count being bestowed upon Tromp by the King of Denmark; and an engraving of Tromp’s funeral procession.
A French edition was published in the Hague in 1695 as La vie de Corneille Tromp, lieutenant-amiral-général de Hollande et de West-Frise and an English edition appeared as The Life of Cornelius van Tromp, Lieutenant-Admiral of Holland and Westfriesland in London in 1697. Alden-Landis IV, p. 243; NMM II, 1380; van Eeghen & van der Kellen, Het werk van Jan en Casper Luyken, 219.
26. WATTS, Isaac. Divine Songs, in easy Language, for the Use of Children. Calcutta: Printed at the Church Mission Press. 1826. 16mo (135 x 107mm), pp. [2], 40; some slight foxing, contemporary pen trials and ownership inscriptions to inside covers and initial blank; a good copy in the publisher’s printed green wrappers, soiled, spine defective. £825
Unrecorded Calcutta imprint, apparently the only early Indian edition of any of Isaac Watts’s hymns. The simplicity and memorability of Isaac Watt’s hymns, first published 1715 and one of the most reprinted works of that century, made them popular with missionaries introducing native populations to the fundamental principles of Christianity. The book is typical of the output of Calcutta’s Church Mission Press which focused on ‘school books and tracts’ (it also published a journal, The Christian Intelligencer). An article in The Christian Spectator, published in October 1826, praised the productivity of the press: ‘the whole establishment is carried on with vigour. In twelve months there have been printed … a total of 55,200 [books]’. Another article in the same issue gives a sense of the challenges facing missionaries attempting to educate the youth of Calcutta: ‘holidays and poojahs have a very bad effect on the minds of children’ and the practice of ‘early marriage’ is especially deleterious to attempts to educate young girls. 1826 was a sad year for Calcutta’s Christians, as they suffered the loss of their much-loved bishop Reginald Heber (author of the hymn ‘From Greenland’s Icy Mountains’ and brother of the famous book collector). Calcutta was an early centre of publishing and educational activity in India. The Baptist missionary William Clarke’s famous Serampore Mission Press (founded in 1800) was responsible for printing the Bible in twenty-five Indian vernaculars and for producing the first Bengali Newspaper. In 1830 (only four years after the publication of the present work), the first infant school in British India was opened in Calcutta.
No copies in OCLC and COPAC. We have been unable to locate any other early Indian editions of Watts’s hymns.
ANNOTATED ARTICLES 27. WELCHMAN, Edward. XXXIX articuli ecclesiae Anglicanae, textibus è sacra scriptura depromptis confirmati, brevibusque notis illustrati. Adjectis insuper nominibus auctorum locisque in quibus doctrina in articulis contenta fusius explicatur. In usum juventutis academicae ... Editio secunda auctior et emendatior, cui accedit appendix de doctrina patrum. Oxford, e typographeo Clarendoniano, 1714. Two parts in one vol., 8vo, pp. [x], 42, [4], 32, interleaved with 75 pages of manuscript notes in English; blank upper margin of title cut away (not touching text), small worn track to inner margin of first two quires, a few marks, else a very good copy; bound in contemporary vellum with later marbled paper to covers; a few small cracks to spine, a few marks; ‘R. Kingston’ to front free endpaper, bookplate of R.C. Fiske. £750 Uncommon second edition of Welchman’s Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, heavily annotated by a near contemporary reader. A fellow of Merton College, Oxford, Welchman (1665-1739) first published his edition, aimed at young readers, in 1713. It proved hugely popular, the English version being regularly reprinted well into the nineteenth century. Our copy is interleaved with extensive notes in English by one R. Kingston, opening with a passage beginning ‘Tis objected agst ye doctrine of ye Trinity that it contradicts itself ’, before proceeding to consider ‘that there is a God is a truth that may be demonstrated by many arguments’, including discussion of first causes and miracles. Kingston’s notes then tackle each of the Thirty-Nine Articles in turn, breaking them down into propositions and presenting
objections and answers regarding their meaning, with regular reference to Biblical passages. Further notes are appended specifically on articles 6, 9, 17, 21, 22, 27, 28, 34, 36, 37, and 39. Kingston’s notes finish with six pages on subscription to the Articles at the end of which he gives his source as ‘Dr Coneybeare’. This must be John Conybeare (1692-1755), of Exeter College and later Christ Church, Oxford, whose sermon on The case of subscription to Articles of religion consider’d was preached and published in Oxford in 1725. This makes Robert Kingston of Lincoln College, Oxford (BA 1724-5, MA 1728) the likely owner and annotator of our volume. ESTC T73711 (recording only two copies in the US).
FREDERICK H. EVANS’S COPY 28. WHITE, Gleeson. English illustration. ‘The sixties’: 1855-70 … Westminster, Archibald Constable & Co., 1897. 8vo, pp. xiv, 203, [1], xv-xix, [1], 137 engraved plates and photogravures; a fine copy with some spotting and toning to endpapers, terminal blanks and half-title; occasional spotting to plates, but illustrations in good condition; halftitle; title-page in red and black; top edges gilt, others untrimmed, but plates are trimmed; marbled endpapers; in cream cloth, upper cover and spine gilt with title and repeating design of thorns and flowering bushes; ex libris Frederick H. Evans, his engraved bookplate, and marginal notes in pencil. £350 First edition. White’s catalogue of ‘English’ illustration represents perhaps the first attempt by a British author to catalogue (monographs excepted) what was, at that time, ‘modern’ British art. This according to a review by Joseph Pennell (Daily Chronicle, March 1897), whose 1895 Modern Illustration, edited by White, constituted a wider European selection. White’s catalogue incorporates illustrations by a number of eminent painters, including members of the PreRaphaelite Brotherhood, whose names are now household, including Rosetti, Madox Brown, Holman Hunt, Millais, Arthur Hughes, Leighton and BurneJones. The most prominent artist by far is Frederick Sandys, whose illustrations evoke the biblical and mythological subjects that recur throughout. This is a contemporary exposition of artists who were in their time fashionable but by no means established or collected: amongst his visitors, writes White, or at least amongst those who were not artists ‘by profession as well as by temperament … the spoon-bill bonnet and the male ‘turban’ of the ‘sixties’ merely provoked ridicule’. With this book White was making a very early attempt to validate an already ‘half-forgotten’ movement of modern art.
The catalogue does not reproduce the paintings of the artists but reprints the engravings and woodblock prints that have appeared in publications, which White lists at the start, and monographs of their works. In this edition the plates have been bound together at the end of the book rather than throughout the textual portion as indicated by the index (which has itself been moved to precede the plates). The plates therefore form a singular catalogue of illustration, artist by artist, with each in turn appearing as an ‘individual’ within Gleeson’s choice, built up over a ‘perplexing’ three decades. There are technological advancements at play here: the plates are in places signed by electro-engraving companies, and the book also contains seven photogravures of the original woodblock prints, one of them photographed by Fred Hollyer, portraitist and friend of the Pre-Raphaelites. New technologies, however useful, are also problematic: Gleeson heralds the decline of woodblock-printing, and encourages his viewers to go and see the superior originals in the collection at South Kensington, which was to become the V&A. Frederick H. Evans (1853-1943) was known chiefly for his platinotype photography of cathedrals; Stieglitz called him ‘the greatest exponent of architectural photography’. Evans began his career as a bookseller, and was a friend and portraitist of Aubrey Beardsley. A stickler for realism and detail, he was mistrustful of new photographic techniques and fashions: silver paper replacing the more expensive platinum, and abstraction instead of ‘pure’ photography. He was a collector of Blake and Holbein. (Grove Art) In places the initials ‘F.H.E.’ appear in the margins, along with other brief pencil notes in Evans’s handwriting.
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IMAGES: This page, details from item 27, WHITE; covers, image and details from item 17, BLOSSFELDT.
