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18TH-CENTURY BOOKS
Aa-Al Am-Az Ba-Beq Ber-Bo Bibles Bp-Bz
Ca-Cb Cc-Coq Cor-Cz Da-Di Dj-Dz
Ea-England English-Ez F Ga-Gp Gr-Gz Ha-Hb
Hc-Hz I-K La-Lel Lem-Log Loh-Lz Maa-Mar
Mas-Mz N-O Pa-Pi Pj-Pz Q-R Sa-Sch
Sci-Se Sf-Sol Som-Sz Ta-Th Ti-U Va-Wil Wim-Z
Brook, Mary. Reasons for the necessity of silent waiting, in order to the solemn worship of God...third edition. London: Mary Hinde, 1775. 8vo (20 cm, 7.9"). [2], 31, [1 (blank)] pp.
$325.00
Third edition of Brook’s explication of the principles underlying Quaker worship practices, issued by a woman printer—Mary Hinde, successful printer and publisher of numerous Quaker items.
ESTC T65811. Recent wrappers. Pages age-toned, with a few small spots.
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Political
/Jurisprudential
/ Theatrical
SATIRE
[Broome, Ralph].
Letters from Simpkin the second to his dear brother in Wales,
containing an humble description of the trial of William Hastings, Esq. with
Simon's answer. Dublin: P. Byrne & J. Moore,
1788. 8vo (18.5 cm, 7.25"). 46 pp.
(lacking half-title).
$325.00
First Irish printing, from the same year as the English first: Broome, adopting the persona of a Welsh country bumpkin, mocks Sheridan and other members of Parliament for their proceedings during the trial of William Hastings.
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ESTC N2497. Recent marbled-paper wrappers, front wrapper with paper title label. Lacking half-title. Title-page with lower corner neatly off, otherwise in excellent, clean condition. (3247)
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Browne, Isaac Hawkins. Poems upon various subjects, Latin and English. London: J. Nourse, 1768. 8vo (24 cm, 9.4"). [10], 160 pp. (frontis. lacking).
$150.00

First edition of these poems, published posthumously by the author’s son; of two similar issues printed in the same year, this was the one meant for the general public, with the other intended for private circulation only. Browne was a notably witty and amiable conversationalist whose company (though not his public speechmaking) was prized by Dr. Johnson; he is best remembered today for his poems “A Pipe of Tobacco” (“Blest leaf! Whose aromatic gales dispense / To templars modesty, to parsons sense”) and “De Animi Immortalitate,” a meditation on the immortality of the soul — both of which are included here, the latter with Soame Jenyns’s English translation. ESTC T116967. Recent marbled paper–covered boards, spine with printed paper label. Frontispiece lacking; title-page and a few others stamped by a now-defunct institution. Inner margins of the first two leaves and outer margin of the final leaf repaired.

The Author Was a
Strange (Mental) Case
Browne, Simon. A defence of the religion of nature, and the Christian revelation; against the defective account of the one, and the exceptions against the other, in a book, entitled, Christianity as old as the creation. London: Richard Ford, 1732. 8vo (20.6 cm, 8.1"). vi, [2], 267, 272–512 pp.
$575.00
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First edition, with errata slip present. Browne was a dissenting minister who, according to Allibone, spent the last ten years of his life under the delusion that God had “annihilated in him the thinking substance, and utterly divested him of consciousness: that though he retained the human shape, and the faculty of speaking, in a manner that appeared to others rational, he had all the while no more notion of what he said than a parrot” — and yet while in that state, he compiled Greek and Latin dictionaries, answered Woolston's Discourse on the Miracles of Our Saviour, and wrote this rebuttal of Tindal's Christianity as Old as the Creation.
ESTC T86771; Allibone 263. Period-style calf framed and panelled in blind rolls with blind-tooled corner fleurons, spine with gilt-stamped leather title and author labels, gilt-dotted raised bands, and gilt-stamped decorations in compartments (signed in blind on lower rear turn-in by Grace Bindings). Pagination jumps from 267 to 272, text complete. Title-page with early inked annotation on the authorship of Christianity as Old as the Creation, and with institutional rubber-stamp in lower margin; closed lower edges rubber-stamped. First and last few leaves lightly spotted. (23782)
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Corruption Trial & Ultimate Vindication
Buchan, David Stewart Erskine, Earl of. Letters of Albanicus to the people of England, on the partiality and injustice of the charges brought against Warren Hastings, Esq., late Governor General of Bengal. London: Pr. for J. Debrett,, 1786. 8vo (19.5 cm; 7.5"). [1] f., vii, [1 (blank)], 97, [1 (blank)] pp.
$950.00
The Earl of Buchan (1742–29) writes convincingly in defense of Warren Hastings (1732–1818), the former governor of Bengal, against charges levelled against him by Burke. Buchan was impeached on several charges, others were added in later months, and the trial
dragged on from 1787 to 1795, when he was ultimately found not guilty of all charges. What a nightmare!
Attributed to the Earl of Buchan by Halkett & Laing (vol. 9 [1962 ed.]).
Goldsmiths’-Kress 13204; ESTC T143537. Recent full brown speckled calf, covers gilt-tooled in the Cambridge style. Raised bands on spine accented with gilt beading on bands and defined by gilt rules above and below each band. Title-page printed aslant or trimmed somewhat askew, and with a few small old inkspots; pamphlet otherwise clean, with occasional light instances of foxing. (21735)
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Buckingham
& Chandos, Anna Elizabeth Grenville, Duchess of, Respondent.
[drop-title] Appeal from the High Court of Chancery. ...Anna Eliza Dutchess of
Chandos..., appellant, ...Anna Eliza Brydges [& others]..., respondents. The
case of the respondents. [London, 1795]. Folio (45.1 cm, 17.75"). 13, [1] pp.
[bound with] Chandos, Anna Eliza Brydges,
Duchess of, Appellant. [drop-title]
House of Lords. ...Case of the Appellant. [London, 1795]. Very tall folio (45.1
cm, 17.75"). 3, [1], 4 pp.
$200.00
An appeal from the High Court of Chancery to the House of Lords concerning the will of James, Duke of Chandos, the appellant being his wife, and the respondent being his daughter. This case bears a few manuscript notes, including one on the last page of the case for the respondents, “Le Roy le Veult/Soit Baillé aux Segnieurs” (“The King wills it; let it be delivered to the Lords”)—denoting a judgement in the respondent’s favor (judgment was given on 20 November 1795).
ESTC T214094 & T214093. Removed from a nonce volume: Sewn edge guillotined halfway down and the whole once folded in half; tearing and a little soiling along the fold with loss of individual words, and, in the second work (the Case of the Appellant), the upper half of p. 13 fully detached. Shallow tattering and soiling along edges. Manuscript notes as above.

NOT the Progress — The Pharisee & Publican & the Dying Sayings
Bunyan, John. A discourse upon the Pharisee and Publican. Wherein several weighty things are handled ... the twelfth edition, corrected. To which is added his last sermon; as also his dying sayins [sic]. London: John Marshall, 1725. 12mo (14.7 cm, 5.75"). 166 pp. (lacking final blank f.).
$900.00

Uncommon early 18th-century edition of this important theological work, originally printed in 1685. All of Bunyan’s works, not just his Pilgrim’s Progress, were widely read and often reprinted in his day; this 1725 printing is described as the 12th edition, but ESTC locates only three editions (in 1704, 1705, and 1706) between the initial appearance and the present example. The 1704–25 editions are all scarce, surviving in only a few copies each.
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John Marshall also issued this work in the same year as the present example with a slightly different title-page, reading “Wherein several great and weighty things . . . ,” this being a copy of the issue with a cancel title-page.
The text is illustrated with one woodcut scene. A few copies are described as having a frontispiece, which would not be integral to the collation; presumably it was added later and so not original.
Provenance: John Kinsman, jun., 1760; Edwin P. Farnham, 1903.
ESTC T58485. Recent speckled paper wrappers. Free endpapers and first and last leaves with worm damage to edges; final blank leaf lacking. Front free endpaper and dedication page with rubber-stamped numerals (no other markings). Lower outer corners waterstained in first portion of volume; some darker stains from laid-in plant matter, with several leaves having words obscured or lost due to botanical adhesions — in the worst case, one leaf with hole affecting about 30 words from having adhered to plant matter, subsequent leaf with about 15 words obscured. Some headers just shaved but no catchwords touched. Title-page verso and back free endpaper with inked ownership inscriptions as above. (20618)
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“Water of Life”
Bunyan, John. The water of life: Or, a discourse shewing the richness and glory of the grace and spirit of the Gospel, as set forth in Scripture by this term, the water of life. Leeds: J. Binns, 1791. 12mo (13.5 cm, 5.4"). 108 pp.
$400.00
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Although Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is his best-remembered
work today, all of his works enjoyed a wide audience in their time. This treatise
on the nature of divine grace went through numerous editions following its original
publication in 1688, the year of the author's death; this example is the seventh
edition, with all of the intervening 18th-century editions being fairly scarce
in institutional holdings.
The
present edition is scarce as well: Only one U.S. institution reports ownership
(two reported copies having been deaccessioned, and one apparent other being
a duplicate report).
ESTC T58617. Recent full calf, absolutely plain with
no spine label. Title-page and back free endpaper institutionally rubber-stamped;
last page and back free endpaper with a few early inked letters and the date
1899. Pages browned, with intermittent staining. (20675)

Really Printed in
Kilkenny, not Cologne
Burke, Thomas. Hibernia Dominicana. Sive Historia Provinciae Hiberniae Ordinis Praedicatorum. Coloniae Agrippinae [i.e., Kilkenny]: ex typographia Metternichiana sub Signo Gryphi, 1762. 4to (23 cm; 9.125"). xv,, 949, [1] pp.
$2250.00
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Burke (ca. 1710–76) was a Dominican who after 1759 served as Bishop of Ossory. Throughout his life he was an important intermediary link between the Catholic Church of Ireland and the Vatican. His chief published work is this history of the Dominican Order in Ireland, which exists in four states: with or without episcopal rank of the author spelled out as opposed to abbreviated with ellipses on the title-page; imprint reading Cologne or Kilkenny. The British Isles origin of the “Cologne” printing is confirmed by lower-case preliminary roman page numbers and page numbers in square brackets, and the first gathering’s sig. “B.”
Those copies with the Kilkenny impirnt (Killkenniae: ex typographi Jacobi Stokes) are far fewer than those with the Cologne imprint, but it is clear that all copies were printed at Kilkenny by Stokes.
Not a common work: NUC Pre-1956 and OCLC combine to locate only eight copies in U.S. libraries.
Provenance: On title-page, ownership inscriptions of the Revs. Thomas Qualy (1829) and Jacob Cleary. Additional Cleary ownership inscriptions on p. 1 (1873) and iii (1891), the latter a gift inscription on the occasion of that owner's giving the volume to a Rev. Thomas Kelly.
Bradshaw Irish Coll., nos. 5222-5223; ESTC t036179. Recent full brown calf with covers panelled in the Cambridge style, author/title/etc. lettering in gilt directly to spine; spine with gilt rules above and below bands and gilt devices in the compartments. Title-page soiled and small portion of lower inside blank margin torn away and repaired; same page has old library call number in ink and the date of publication in ballpoint! Ownership notes as above. Very light waterstain in lower blank margins of preliminary leaves. Generally a very nice, clean copy. (24805)
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Büsch, Johann Georg. Versuch einer Geschichte der Hamburgischen Handlung, nebst zwei kleineren Schriften eines verwandten Inhalts. Hamburg: Benjamin Gottlob Hoffmann, 1797. 8vo (17.7 cm, 7"). x, [2], 288, 60 pp.
$875.00

First edition: Economic history of trade in Hamburg, written by
the author of Grundriss einer Geschichte der merkwürdigsten Welthändel
neuerer Zeit in einem erzählenden Vortrage.
Click
the interior image for an enlargement.
Uncommon:
Fewer than nine copies located in U.S. libraries.
Goldsmiths’-Kress 16971. Period-style speckled paper, spine with printed paper title and publication labels. Title-page and one other rubber-stamped by a now-defunct institution (being a “mercantile” library, intereting provenance for this work; title-page with short tear from upper margin (touching one word of title) repaired some time ago. Pages age-toned; first few leaves with inner margins waterstained.
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Burlamaqui, Jean Jacques. Principes du droit naturel. Geneve: Chez Barrillot & fils, 1747. 4to (24.3 cm, 9.55"). XXIV, 352 pp.
$850.00
First edition of this lucid examination of the philosophy of natural law, written by a Swiss jurist. The Encyclopaedia Britannica says of Burlamaqui that “his fundamental principle may be described as rational utilitarianism” (IV, 836); his writings served as important source material for the political theory underpinning the Declaration of Independence.
This may be a later issue of the 1747 first edition; the last line of p. 7 here begins with “de l’esprit” and the first line of p. 223 with “tage au préjudice.” A companion volume to the present work, Principes du droit politique, was to be printed posthumously in 1754 and it is not present here — this volume being a very satisfactory stand-alone, arriving at a conclusion describing the “heureux accord de la lumière Naturelle & Révélée.” (Conceiving of the two works as vols. I and II of a larger whole is an anachronism in period to 1766 when de Felice was to bring them together for the first time.)
Not in Brunet. Recent quarter calf over marbled paper–covered sides, spine with gilt-stamped leather labels and gilt-stamped decorations in compartments. Pages age-toned, with light foxing in spots; outer and lower edges of title-page showing offsetting from original turn-ins.
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