Books

I have now sold most of my book collection.
This is a record of those that have interested me the most, and in some cases, where they have ended up.

Detail from the 13th century medieval manuscript used to bind an almanac, the Merlini Anglici Ephemeris (1651)

Popular Literature

Often produced in large print runs and in many editions, some fictional tales survived in print for hundreds of year.
Many are now forgotten, but they were well known to generations of readers, many of whom grew up to be writers.
These works helped nurture both their imaginative faculties, and those of readers of all social classes.

The Destruction of Troy. By Raoul Lefevre. 7th edition (1663); 10th edition (1680); 11th edition (1684); 13th edition (1708).
Tales of heroism, chivalry, bloodshed, violence, and gory deaths.

An edition of the Gesta Romanorum or the 'Deeds of the Romans', printed in London in 1689.

The Famous History of Montelion, Knight of the Oracle. By Emanuel Forde. London: 1695.
More chivalric derring-do. A prose romance.

The Most Famous, Delectable, and Pleasant History of Parismus. 2 parts. By Emanuel Forde. 14th edition. London: 1696.
And another chivalric prose romance.

The Famous History of the Seven Champions of Christendom. By Richard Johnson. London: 1696.
And yet another chivalric prose romance. The seven champions were St. George, St. Denis, St. James, St. Anthony, St. Andrew, St. Patrick, and St. David. St. George's three sons feature in the second part. Lots of monsters, dragons, giants, and ladies in distress.

The Unfortunate Concubines: The History of Fair Rosamond, Mistress to Henry II, and Jane Shore, Concubine to Edward IV. London: 1713.
An early and previously unknown edition of two stories expanded here from the seventeenth century ballad and chapbook editions, illustrated with woodcuts. [Bodleian Library, Oxford]

The History of the Five Wise Philosophers. By H. Parsons. London: [c.1725].
A somewhat bizarre tale of Jehosaphat, son of Avenerio, King of Barma in India.

The Fortunate and Unfortunate Lovers, or The History of the Lives, Fortune, and Adventures of Dorastus and Fawnia, [and] Hero and Leander.
By Hugh Stanhope or William Bond. London: [c.1727].
Two popular tales, the first part being a retelling of the story that was used by Shakespeare as a source for The Winter's Tale.

The Noble and Renowned History of Guy Earl of Warwick. By G. L. 6th edition. London: 1729.
An eighteenth century re-telling of the old chivalric romance of Guy, Earl of Warwick. Some of the woodcuts match those used in chapbook editions dating back to the seventeenth century.

The Illustrious and Renowned History of the Seven Famous Champions of Christendom. 9th edition. London: 1766.
A later version of the tales.

The Holy Bible Abridged. 3rd edition. London: 1760.
Costing sixpence, bound, John Newbery's tiny Bible for children has little woodcut illustrations.

The New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Abridged and Harmonized in the Words of the Evangelists, and adorned with Cuts. For the Use of Children. London: 1764.
Another of John Newbery's childrens' Bibles, this one sold for a shilling and has full-page woodcut illustrations.

A copy of the Geneva Bible London: 1616. The Geneva Bible was replaced by the King James' Bible from 1605, after the publication of which, its use was increasingly discouraged. Nevertheless it remained the chosen edition for those of a more puritanical disposition. This copy was owned by one Will. Millet, and later by Mrs. Ann Jackson, who bequeathed it (in 1695) to Christchurch (the Church of Kilbrogan) in Bandon, County Cork, Eire, one of the first erected in Ireland for Protestant worship.

The Works of Bishop Joseph Hall (London: 1625).
Hall was a writer of literary works, competing with Thomas Lodge and John Donne to produce the earliest English works of satire. He took holy orders, rising to become Bishop of Exeter and then of Norwich.

Christ in the Clouds. By Thomas Wadsworth. 2nd edition. London: 1677.
A unique copy of a seventeenth century 'penny godliness' (a religious chapbook). There is a copy of the 6th edition in the Pepys Library, at Cambridge.
[British Library]

A Thumb Bible (London: 1720-1721), so named (in the nineteenth century) after General Tom Thumb for its diminutive size. Written by John Taylor, the Water Poet, a Thames ferryman and seventeenth century celebrity, this tiny book contains verse couplets on each of the books of the Bible, under the titles Verbum Sempiternum (for the Old Testament), and Salvator Mundi (for the New Testament). 272pp long, it measures just 4½cm x 5½cm x 2cm thick. The text is perfectly readable. All early Thumb Bibles are rare, partly because they were popular with small children, but perhaps also because they are so small it is easy to lose them.

Spiritual Advice to Children. London: 1740.
An otherwise unrecorded tract (priced at 4d, or 3s 6d per dozen), with the manuscript note 'By Mr. Blyth' recorded on it in an early hand, perhaps Francis Blyth (1705?-1772).
[Bodleian Library, Oxford]

A collection of around 132 tracts published by the Religious Tract Society of London, bound into 10 volumes for the Chapel Library, Pangbourn, in August 1834. The date of binding assists in dating the tracts themselves, which were usually issued without dates, and frequently reprinted.
[British Library]

The Triumphs of God's Revenge Against the Crying and Execrable Sin of Murther. 3 parts. By John Reynolds, merchant of Exeter. London: 1622-1629.
Tremendously important in the development of English fiction, these tales of people getting their just deserts, the body-count getting higher as you read, used the idea of telling ostensibly moral tales as a cover for a good story that would otherwise be frowned upon for its content.

The Rogue by Mateo Alemán, translated into English by James Mabbe. London: 1623.
One of the earliest picaresque novels, Mabbe's translation was published by Edward Blount at the same time as he was handling the publication of the first folio of Shakespeare. Ben Jonson supplied a dedicatory poem for both The Rogue and for the first folio.

The Isle of Man by Richard Bernard. 2nd edition. London: 1627.
A religious allegory that pre-figured Bunyan's much later Pilgrim's Progress. An inscription states that this copy was a gift given by Persis Bennet to her brother Thomas on 15th April 1690. The first edition of 1626 exists only in a single copy held at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington.

A copy of Euphues by John Lyly made up from fragments of three different copies from the four editions published 1617-1636. This including the rare variant of the 1631 edition that has a title page to the second part of the work dated 1630. Another copy then turned up with a first part dated 1631, a second part dated 1623, and another copy of the first part with no title page bound in at the end. Hard on the heels of these came an imperfect copy of the 1609 edition of the second part, bound into the rear of which were five leaves from an even earlier edition of 1580-1584. Euphues was an Elizabethan publishing sensation, the first part appearing in 1578, and the second part in 1580. Many surviving copies are fragmentary.

Volume 7 (of 10) of Artamene ou Le Grand Cyrus by Madeleine de Scudéry. Paris: 1653.
Generally regarded as the longest novel in French history, the 10 volumes stretch to about 13,000 pages. Volume 7, complete with the engraved plates by François Chauveau, is 1287pp long and not something you'd want to perch on your tummy for bedtime reading. Whilst England experimented with republicanism, the rest of Europe were busy reading this. The seventeenth century equivalent of a soap opera, the first edition was published from 1649-1653.

The Unequal Match: or, The Life of Mary of Anjou, Queen of Majorca. 2 parts. London: 1681-1683.
Translated from the French by Ferrand Spence.

The History of Lucy Wellers. By Miss. Smythies of Colchester. London: 1754.
A two volume novel. According to the inscription inside, once owned by a Mary French of Ticehurst, Sussex.

Themidore and Rozette; or, Authentic Anecdotes of a Parisian Counsellor, and Courtesan. London: 1783.
Translated from the French of Claude Godard d’Aucour. A unique copy of a work only previously known from a variant edition at Harvard. This is an erotic novel, or as a contemporary reviewer called it, 'low obscenity'.
[British Library.]

Bleak House. By Charles Dickens. London: 1852.
The first part of the novel, in its original wrappers, as you'd have bought it from the bookstall in March 1852, complete with the slip-in advertisements, just like magazines have today.

A copy of Volpone (1616), one of Ben Jonson's most celebrated plays. Originally published on its own in the smaller quarto format in 1607, Jonson revised it for publication in the first folio of his Workes in 1616. If Jonson had not set a precedent by publishing his plays in such an edition, the folio editions of Shakespeare's plays, and those of Beaumont and Fletcher may not have been published, and a number of their plays would have been entirely lost to us. At the time drama was not popularly regarded as being worthy of publication in a substantial folio, and the financial risk was considerable. Jonson revised his own plays and then made numerous small alterations as they were being printed. So many, that no two copies of the first folio of Jonson's works are believed to be exactly alike. Throughout the seventeenth century, Jonson was more highly regarded than Shakespeare. This was most likely abstracted from a copy of the first folio in the nineteenth century, when it was bound as a single text.

Adrasta: or, The Womans Spleene, and Loves Conquest. By John Jones. London: 1635.
The only recorded work of John Jones, about whom nothing appears to be known. The play is stated on the title page to never have been acted. Although such claims are not always accurate, Jones elaborates upon this in an interesting preface which hints at the reading and hearing of plays other than through their performance on stage or their appearance in print. The action is set in Florence, the cast including Cosmo (a Duke), Adrasta (his Duchess), Mr. Frailware (a grocer and constable), Mistris Ambrosia Frailware (his wife), Debora (her maid), Micale (a witch), Damon and Arminio (shepherds) and Laurinda (a shepherdess). The play begins unusually: 'A little before the Prologue comes forth, enters one of the Actors and sits downe on the Stage as a stranger, awhile after enters the Prologue and stumbles at his legs'. This is Althea's soliloquy on parricide from Act I (Lucilio is the son of Cosmo and Adrasta):

                                    Warm blood assist me! How has wonder seiz'd
                                    The frozen passages that slowly guide
                                    My shivering spirits up to the seat of life!
                                    Murder the Duke! Now innocence forbid,
                                    And led ourselves be as our loves, unstain'd.
                                    Tyrannous affection! Can thy transforming power
                                    Enforce our passions thus beyond our selves?
                                    Rob us of nature and the sense of man?
                                    Seize all our actions? Force us to forget
                                    That we are children? And with loves finger blot
                                    Clean from our thoughts the piety we owe
                                    To them that gave us life? Carry us headlong
                                    To such a gulf of sin? Where we must drown
                                    Our selves, our honour, and that secure content
                                    A guiltless conscience brings to innocence!
                                    Ah dear Lucilio! How are thy virtues dimm'd
                                    In my best thoughts, that like a crystal mirror
                                    Still held the shapes of thy deserving actions
                                    Unspottedly resembl'd! What spirit of night
                                    Has mixt it self with those untainted vows
                                    Thy never yet ambitious soul pour'd forth
                                    To attend our loves? Some angel, dear Lucilio,
                                    Descend into thy fancy to persuade thee
                                    By all the bands Love, Duty, Nature, Heaven
                                    Can bring to bind thee in a tender fear
                                    Of roughly breathing on the sofest air
                                    That toucheth but his safety, to desist
                                    From this unnatural act of paricide.
                                    Fatal experience speaks; and makes it good,
                                    They stand not firm that rise by steps of blood.

Christ's Passion. A Tragedy. By Hugo Grotius, translated by George Sandys. London: 1640.
Five acts, in verse. Rather unusual, being a religious drama originally written by Grotius, a Dutch lawyer and philosopher.

Comedies and Tragedies Written by Francis Beaumont and Iohn Fletcher Gentlemen. London: 1647.
A copy of the first folio edition of the works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher.

The real thing? Click here for more on the Abridgement signature

The Third Volume of Chronicles by Raphael Holinshed (and others). London: 1587.
A huge folio volume of more than 1500 pages containing the history of England from 1066 to 1586. Shakespeare used Holinshed's Chronicles as a source for about one third of his plays, all of the later history plays having some reliance on this third volume. Almost all surviving copies are what you might call 'interesting' in bibliographical terms. As soon as the second edition of 1587 had been published, the Privy Council ordered that a number of cuts be made in it. In the 1720s a volume was published containing the expurgated leaves, intending that these be bound with surviving copies. Apparently complete copies may well include leaves printed in the eighteenth century.

Published in 1598 in folio, the mix of pastoral verse and prose printed under the title of the Diana of George of Montemayor consisted of three works all translated by Bartholomew Yong: Jorge de Montemayor's Diana, the sequel written by Alonso Pérez, and Gaspar Gil Polo's Diana Enamorata. Yong's translation is dedicated to Lady Rich (Penelope Devereux, Countess of Devonshire, the step-daughter of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester). Although only entered into the Stationers' Register on 9 September 1598, Yong's translation had been completed in 1583, and Shakespeare is believed to have read the work in manuscript, or seen a lost play based upon it, performed by the Queen's Men in 1585. It has always been regarded, directly or indirectly, as a primary source of The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Recently however, it has also been suggested as containing source material for A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, Twelfth Night and The Tempest. It has also been suggested as a source (in the original or in one of the various translations published across Europe) for aspects of Lady Mary Wroth's The Countess of Montgomery's Urania. The Diana influenced Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, was mentioned by Cervantes in Don Quixote, and Ben Jonson owned a copy. Yong had spent two years in Spain and received his copy of Montemayor's work from his friend Richard Banister, a recusant. Yong was known to Elizabeth's spymaster Thomas Walsingham, but died peacefully in 1612 and was buried in a parish church in London. This copy has contemporary ownership inscriptions of Anne Warren and of William Davenport - one of a long line of William Davenports of Bramhall, Cheshire, who repeatedly intermarried with the Warrens of Poynton and Stockport.

The Latin play Cornelianum Dolium by T. R. (London: 1638) was one of many plays performed by students at Oxford and Cambridge. Despite being as much a part of the development of drama as the English plays performed in London, very little notice is taken of these university plays, as they are in Latin, and very few have been translated. Most of them are far raunchier than the London plays, and this one (on page 22) contains a reference to Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis.

Florizel and Perdita; or, The Sheep-Shearing. Bell's edition. London: 1784.
Either by David Garrick or McNamara Morgan - different sources attribute to different authors. A rewriting of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale.

Poematum Liber. By Richard Willes. London: 1573.
Tottell's other miscellany, being a collection of samples of different forms of poetry, and a Latin essay on the subject issued by Richard Tottell, publisher of the first miscellany of English verse. This copy was sold by the British Museum (now the British Library) as a duplicate in 1787.

Editions of the works of Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas. Du Bartas was most famous for his epic poem La Sepmaine; ou, Creation du Monde, which was translated into English by Josuah Sylvester. London: 1608 (quarto edition); London: 1611 (quarto edition); London: 1621 (folio edition).

An exceptionally rare, but unidentifiable edition of Henry Fitzgeffrey's Satyrs. London: [1617-1620].
This was bound in at the rear of a volume of The Most Elegant and Witty Epigrams of Sir Iohn Harrington, Knight (London: 1618), and is missing the title page and the final quire, both of which could have identified the edition. Of the three editions published in a four year period, only five copies are recorded: two at the British Library, two at the Bodleian, and one at the V&A.

A first edition of A Helpe to Discourse by W. B. and E. P. London: 1619.
A miscellany that includes unattributed lines of poetry by John Donne, Ben Jonson, Samuel Daniel, Thomas Brewer, Robert Southwell, and John Owen. One other copy of the first edition is recorded (at the Bodleian) and like this copy, it has missing pages. Most early editions of this little book exist in just one or two damaged copies.

Poems on Several Occasions. With Valentinian, a Tragedy. By John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. London: 1709-1710.
Hills' early piracy of the poems, and the play, Valentinian, of my favourite poet, the Earl of Rochester.

A copy of Robin Hood's Garland printed by William and Cluer Dicey in London in the 1740's. The Diceys also sold their books wholesale to chapmen and pedlars from a warehouse in Northampton. This title was very popular throughout the eighteenth century, reprinting the text of a number of ballads of Robin Hood's adventures. In this copy, each ballad is prefixed with a little woodcut illustration.

James Macpherson's own library copy of his Ossian poems, inscribed by his daughter (who also annotated a couple of the footnotes).
[Private Collection]

A beautiful manuscript copy of Mary Blachford Tighe's Psyche; or, The Legend of Love dating from 1810. The poem is more than 27,000 words long.
[Private Collection]

The mysterious, partially rewritten American piracy of The French Convert believed to have been published in New England between 1696 (when the first edition was published in London) and 1708. Until now known only from the copy at Yale (which has a dated inscription of 1708). This copy shares with the Yale copy early American ownership inscriptions (including that of the great granddaughter of Anne Bradstreet, the first female American poet) and a characteristic colonial binding incorporating thin wooden boards. The typography of the book has a notable characteristic: all of the apostrophes are 'turned', having been printed using commas inserted upside down in the forme. This characteristic, which is exceedingly rare, also appears in the first book printed in America, the Bay Psalm Book, printed some 60 years previously. It suggests that the work might have been printed either by an inexperienced Dutchman (Dutch apostrophes are reversed) or using a set of types of Dutch origin. The history of printing in New England in this period is particularly obscure.

A Prospect of Eternity by Thomas Doolittle. Boston: 1709.
Or perhaps not by Doolittle, as this title was only published posthumously, and only in the Colonies. Several editions were produced in 1709, each being sold by different booksellers. This one was printed by John Allen for Eleazer Phillips, and is the only recorded copy.

Robert Barclay's An Apology for the True Christian Divinity was published by James Franklin, the older brother of Benjamin Franklin (who was also a printer) in Rhode Island, in 1729. James Franklin was Rhode Island's first printer, beginning in 1727. Most works printed in the colonies in this period were slim pamphlets, as it was cheaper to import larger works from England. Barclay's work, however, was a thumping great doorstop of a book stretching to more than 600pp. Barclay was a Scotsman, and this book is now in a Scottish university library.

A Verie Profitable Booke of Master John Perkins. London: 1555.
Printed by Richard Tottell, a first edition of Perkins' work on English law. Tottell was primarily a publisher of legal works.

Polydore Vergil's final revision of his history of England, the Anglicæ Historiæ Basle: 1555.
Originally issued in 1534 and revised in 1546, the 1555 edition, published in the year of Vergil's death, saw the work extended to include the reign of Henry VIII. Intended to be a landmark publication, this folio was printed in a particularly fine fount.

A True and Exact Relation of the Severall Informations, Examinations, and Confessions of the Late Witches, Arraigned and Executed in the County of Essex. London: 1645.
A pamphlet describing the activities of the self-styled 'Witchfinder General', Matthew Hopkins. Hopkins was only active between 1644 and 1647 when he died, but in that time he was responsible for the torture and execution of more than 200 innocent people.

Eikon Basilike. London: 1649.
Two of the many editions of this underground Royalist tract.

A merchant's commercial diary from 1651-the height of the English Civil Wars. Written in a copy of William Lilly's 1651 almanac, Merlini Anglici Ephemeris, the diary documents its owner's considerable travels, often between fairs held throughout the country. This may disprove the commonly-held belief that the civil wars heavily disrupted trade. Bound in to the almanac are two poems, in manuscript, epitaphs to a Mary Wallker (perhaps the wife of the diarist). Mary Wallker had 15 children, eight of whom were living at her death. Entries in the diary include mention of King Charles II crossing the border into England with a (largely Scottish) army, Cromwell's arrival at Leicester (23rd August), and 'A great Fight at Woster' on 3rd September (this is the Battle of Worcester, the final and decisive conflict of the civil wars). Just for good measure, the diary is bound in a bifolium (2 leaves) from a medieval manuscript.
[Bodleian Library, Oxford]

The Apprentice's Vade Mecum by Samuel Richardson. London: 1734.
Richardson is famous for writing Clarissa and Pamela, and consequently doing more than anyone else to make the reading of novels an acceptable activity for the middle-classes in the eighteenth century. But Richardson was first and foremost a printer, and his first attempts at writing were less than successful. His first publication was this work, a guide for apprentices. It is exceptionally rare with only a couple of copies known to have survived. Richardson's authorship of it was itself only established in 1943. In the preface, Richardson speaks of a similar work that was to be published at the same time as his own, and you can detect a note of mild panic at the prospect of smaller sales. This other book was The Apprentice's Faithful Monitor by an author who remains unknown, and it is even rarer. In this copy, both texts are bound together.
[Bodleian Library, Oxford]

The New Book of Knowledge. London: 1758.
The signification of dreams, moles, palmistry, weather forecasting, astrology, and all sorts of folklore.

A New Academy of Compliments. Glasgow: 1772.
A rare copy of the often-reprinted guide to the interpretation of dreams, the carving of joints of meat, and the writing of formal letters.

Bell's Weekly Messenger. London: 1822.
A bound volume of the year's issues of this weekly newspaper.

Ada, Countess of Lovelace

A stipple engraving by William Henry Mote, probably after Frank Stone, published c.1832. Ada, the daughter of Lord Byron, was a mathematician, translator, and writer of the first computer program (working with Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine). She was bled to death by her doctors at the age of 37, who were trying to treat her uterine cancer.

Popular Electronics. January 1975 issue.
Featuring the first part of the article describing how, for the first time, you could build your very own 'home computer', the Altair 8800.