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1) 415J\ #779 . Anon.), Waring, Robert, 1614-1658. Translated by John Noris.

Effigies amoris in English: or the picture of love unveil’d.

Oxford: London : Printed for James Good in Oxford, and sold by J. Nut [i.e. Nutt, London], 1701. Second edition of the English translation by John Norton. ¶ Duodecimo; A-E12, F11 (A1, half title, present) Bound in original full calf, missing some leather from spine but cords are very strong. Some wonderful quotes for this book:

The Answer of R. W. to his Friend, importunately desiring to know what LOVE might be?

I Acknowledge the wanton Ty∣ranny of imperious Love, that is always requiring the most diffi∣cult Trials of the Affections. Now though it be a kinde of an Hercu∣lean Labour it self to Love, considering those severe duties, those toyls, and hazards appendant to it; as if Cruelty were its sole delight: Nevertheless we believe it reasonable, what names so∣ever we have given to Love, that he should exercise his Soveraignty, which is certainly very great and puissant; and by the Severity of his Commands, that he should augment the glory of his high Rule, and our obedient Sub∣mission.

“However, this is the supreme Office of Reason, to make a right choice of Disposition and Conditions; to choose a Companion with whom we are sure to live with more delight than with our selves; whose judgment we may be sure to follow as our own: or else to stay till we can finde a proper Ob∣ject of Love. Then also so to love, like one who is guided by Judgment, not carried away by Passion; like one so far from ceasing, that he is always beginning to Love. This is to joyn Patience with Constancy. This is to receive the Idea more fairly imprinted in the Minde, than in Wax, and to preserve more stedfastly. ‘Tis the Of∣fice of Vertue, to determine upon one measure of wishing; to covet a dispo∣sition and inclination like his own, through all the changes of Fortune; and so to make two of one, that they may act the same person.”

ESTC Citation No. N1243

The “Amoris Effigies (anon.), London, 1649, 1664, 1668, 1671. In 1680 appeared a loose English translation, by a Robert Nightingale, which deviated in many points from the Latin original. John Norris, under the pseudonym Phil-iconerus, published a fresh translation, London, 1682; 2nd edit., 1701; In his introduction, Norris wrote of Waring’s “sweetness of fancy, neatness of style, and lusciousness of hidden sense”.
Waring also wrote Latin verses, including in Jonsonus Virbius [playwright Ben Jonson.](1639), reprinted in the 1668 and subsequent editions of the Amoris Effigies, under the title of Carmen Lapidorium.” (DNB).

Price: $1,150.00

 

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2) 342 J Attributed to James Wright

The Humours and conversations of the town expos’d in two dialogues : the first, of the men, the second, of the women.

London : printed for R. Bentley, in Russel-Street, in Covent-Garden, and J. Tonson, at the Judge’s-Head in Chancery-Lane, 1693.

First and only edition. Bound in speckled calf, recently rebacked, with the signature of Jane Modgford on the title and page 1. Wright, James 1643-1713, antiquary and miscellaneous writer, “A versatile writer with a lucid style and a genuine touch of humour, especially as an essayist…” [DNB]. The attribution first appears, in Brice Harris’s facsimile of this edition printed in 1961. The work itself is written as a dialogue between Jovial and Pensive who have visited London and wish to return to the country. Jovial’s cousin, Sociable, enjoys the London social whirl. They argue about the various pleasures of the city versus the country. Dryden is discussed at one point: “the company of the author of Absalom and Achitophel is more valuable, tho’ not so talkative, than that of the modern men of banter; for what he says, is like what he writes; much to the purpose, and full of mighty sense…” This is followed by another, shorter, dialogue between Madam Townlove and Madam Thinkwell.

The original form ‘to a T’ is an old phrase and the earliest citation that I know of is in James Wright’s satire The Humours and Conversations of the Town.

“All the under Villages and Towns-men come to him for Redress; which he does to a T.”

The letter ‘T’ itself, as the initial of a word. If this is the derivation then the word in question is very likely to be ‘tittle’. A tittle is a small stroke or point in writing or printing and is now best remembered via the term jot or tittle. The best reason for believing that this is the source of the ‘T’ is that the phrase ‘to a tittle’ existed in English well before ‘to a T’, with the same meaning;

for example, in Francis Beaumont’s Jacobean comedy drama The Woman Hater, 1607. we find: “Ile quote him to a tittle.”

In this case, although there is no smoking gun, the ‘to a tittle’ derivation would probably stand up in court as ‘beyond reasonable doubt’. Very nice condition. Item #736

Wing; H3720; Cf. Macdonald, Hugh. John Dryden; a bibliography. Oxford, 1939, p. 275-276. :Brett-Smith 305.

ESTC Citation No. R31136

http://estc.bl.uk/F/2Q5SSI4SVQHNH367AHEBKYI48ERDGNF97DX5TJXJ4GXQH4BJ72-07782?func=full-set-set&set_number=005564&set_entry=000001&format=999

https://wp.me/p3kzOR-4dl.

Price: $2,200.00

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 3) #719  B ? J.B. Gent.

The young lovers guide, or, The unsuccessful amours of Philabius, a country lover; set forth in several kind epistles, writ by him to his beautious-unkind mistress. Teaching lovers how to comport themselves with resignation in their love-disasters. With The answer of Helena to Paris, by a country shepherdess. As also, The sixth Æneid and fourth eclogue of Virgil, both newly translated by J.B. Gent. (?)

London : Printed and are to be Sold by theBooksellers of London, 1699. The frontispiece is signed: M· Vander Gucht. scul:. 1660-1725, This copy is bound in original paneled sheep with spine cracking but cords holding Strong.

Wing (2nd ed.), B131; Arber’s Term cat.; III 142
Copies – Brit.Isles : British Library
Cambridge University St. John’s College
Oxford University, Bodleian Library
Copies – N.America : Folger Shakespeare
Harvard Houghton Library
Henry E. Huntington
Newberry
UCLA, Clark Memorial Library
University of Illinois. Item #71

Octavo, A4, B-G8,H6 I2( lacking 3&’4) (A1, frontispiece Present; I3&’4, advertisements lacking )   [8], 116, [4] p. : The frontispiece is signed: M· Vander Gucht. scul:. 1660-1725,
Engraved frontispiece of the Mistress holding a fan,

“Bold Poets and rash Painters may aspire With pen and pencill to describe my Faire, Alas; their arts in the performance fayle, And reach not that divine Original, Some Shadd’wy glimpse they may present to view, And this is all poore humane art Can doe”

. FIRST EDITION. . The author remains unknown.

Price: $3,500.00

 

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“The most successful female playwright of the eighteenth century”

4) 375J. Centlivre, [ Susanna CENTLIVRE,]. 1667-1723

The GAMESTER: A Comedy as it is acted at the New-Theater in Lincolns-Inn-Fields,By Her MaJesty’s Servants.

London. Printed for William Turner, 1705. 1705. Bound in later quarter vellum.

The first edition of playwright and actress Susanna Centlivre’s (bap. 1667?, d. 1723) convoluted gambling comedy, adapted from French dramatist Jean Francois Regnard’s (1655-1709) Le Jouer (1696). The Gamester met with tremendous success and firmly established Centlivre as a part the pantheon of celebrated seventeenth-century playwrights, yet the professional life of the female dramatist remained complicated, with many of her works, as here, being published anonymously and accompanied by a prologue implying a male author.

Centlivre’s comedy, The Gamester, was first performed in February 1705. Here, she declared her intent to reform gamblers. This play was Centlivre’s most successful to date and was frequently revived in later years. ‘Gamester’ is an adaptation of ‘Le Joueur’ of Regnard, played 1696.

CENTLIVRE, English dramatic writer and actress, was born about 1667, probably in Ireland, where her father, a Lincolnshire gentleman named Freeman, had been forced to flee at the Restoration on account of his political sympathies. When sixteen she married the nephew of Sir Stephen Fox, and on his death within a year she married an officer named Carroll, who was killed in a duel. Left in poverty, she began to support herself, writing for the stage, and some of her early plays are signed S. Carroll. In 1706 she married Joseph Centlivre, chief cook to Queen Anne, who survived her.

. Item #375J

Price: $4,000.00

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VI

 

6)  #257J  Ferrand, Jacques Ferrand, medecin

EROTOMANIA or A treatise discoursing of the essence, causes, symptomes, prognosticks, and cure of love, or Erotiqve melancholy. Written by Iames Ferrand Dr. of Physick

Oxford: by L. Lichfield to be sold by Edward Forrest, 1640,  First Edition in English. This copy is neatly bound in 19th century calf with a gilt spine. it is quite a lovely copy.

This book is filled with details chosen on account of the personal motives and life ex- perience of the author. A close reading of Ferrand’s treatise (in particular a careful comparison of the two editions) reveals that he had to deal with criticism from both the religious establishment (the Catholic Church) and the academic establishment (his colleagues in the Paris medical faculty)

“Climate, diet and physical activity (three of the six “non-natural IMG_0893causes”) were the main elements controlling an individual’s health8. However, a reading of descriptions of the lifestyle which is most likely to lead to being infected by love melancholy makes it clear that the disease was characteristic of a specific social class. Wine, white bread, eggs, rich meats (especially white meat and stuffed poultry), nuts and most sweets were thought to be prob- lematic. Aphrodisiac foods such as honey, exotic fruits, cakes and sweet wines were considered to be extremely dangerous.

SMALL OCTAVO (5 3/4 x 3 5/8″). a-b⁸ c⁴ A-Z⁸.. Translated from the French by Edmund Chilmead.

Price: $9,500.00

 

 

VII

7) \#783  FISHER, James [HATFIELD, Martha].

The wise virgin: or, A wonderfull narration of the various dispensations of God towards a childe of eleven years of age; wherein as his severity hath appeared in afflicting, so also his goodness both in enabling her (when stricken dumb, deaf, and blind, through the prevalency of her disease) at several times to utter many glorious truths concerning Christ, faith, and other subjects; and also in recovering her without the use of any external means, lest the glory should be given to any other. To the wonderment of many that came far and neer to see and hear her. With some observations in the fourth year since her recovery. She is the daughter of Mr. Anthony Hatfield gentleman, in Laughton in York-shire; her name is Martha Hatfield. The third edition enlarged, with some passages of her gracious conversation now in the time of health. By James Fisher, servant of Christ, and minister of the Gospel in Sheffield

London: Printed for John Rothwell, at the Fountain, in Cheap-Side. MDCLVI. 1656.

The Wise Virgin, appeared five times between 1653 and 1665; some editions have a portrait frontispiece, and it is entirely possible that the present third edition should have one at A1v, though the copy scanned by Early English Books Online does not have one .  Only two copies located by ESTC;  Yale, and  Oxford. Wing (2nd ed.), F1006
(from which the EEBO copy was made). Octavo, 143 x 97 x 23 mm (binding), 139 x 94 x 18 mm (text block). A-M8, N3. Lacks A1, blank or portrait? [26], 170 pp. Bound in contemporary calf, upper board reattached, somewhat later marbled and blank ends. Leather rubbed with minor loss to extremities. Interior: Title stained, leaves soiled, gathering N browned, long vertical tear to E2 without loss, tail fore-corner of F8 torn away, with loss of a letter, side notes of B2v trimmed. Item #783

A remarkable survival of the third edition of the popularinterregnum account of Sheffield Presbyterian minister
James Fisher’s 11-year-old niece Martha Hatfield’s prophetic dialogues following her recovery from a devastating catalepsy that had left her “dumb, deaf, and blind.” Martha’s disease, which defies modern retrodiagnostics, was at the time characterized as                                                                               “spleenwinde,” a term even the Oxford English Dictionary has overlooked. Her sufferings were as variable as they were extraordinary—the young girl at one point endured a 17-day fugue state during which her eyes remained open and fixed and she gnashed her teeth to the breaking point. In counterpoise to the horrors of her infirmity,  her utterances in periods of remission and upon recovery were of great purity and sweetnes it is this stark contrast that was, and is, the persistent allure of this little book.

Price: $4,500.00

 

IX

9) 376J\ Pix, Mary Pix

The conquest of Spain: a tragedy. As it is Acted by Her Majesty’s Servants at the Queen’s Theatre In the Hay-Market

London: London : printed for Richard Wellington, at the Dolphin and Crown in St. Paul’s Church-Yard, 1705.

1705. First edition. Bound in modern quarter vellum from T. Connolly Dublin.

Inspired by Aphra Behn, Mary Pix was among the most popular playwrights on the 17th-century theatre circuit, but fell out of fashion. 

“It is difficult to find a play from this period that’s powered by a funny female protagonist.  It is witty and forthright. Pix was writing plays that not only had more women in the cast than men but women who were managing their destinies.”

Pix was born in 1666, the year of the Great Fire of London, and grew up in the culturally rich time of Charles II. With the prolific Aphra Behn (1640-1689) as her role model, Pix burst on to the London theatre and literary scene in 1696 with two plays – one a tragedy: Ibrahim, the Thirteenth Emperor of the Turks, the other a farce – The Spanish Wives. Pix also wrote a novel – The Inhuman Cardinal.

Her subsequent plays, mostly comedies, became a staple in the repertory of Thomas Betterton’s company Duke’s at Lincoln’s Inn Fields and later at the Queen’s Theatre. She wrote primarily for particular actors, such as Elizabeth Barry and Anne Bracegirdle, who were hugely popular and encouraged a whole generation of women writers.

She says: “Interestingly, both plays have older women at their centre. Whereas Congreve’s play is about women being treacherous towards one another, Pix’s play takes a far more positive view of women, suggesting they should determine their own future.”

In a patriarchal world dominated by self-important men, making a mark as a woman was an uphill struggle. “There was resistance to all achieving women in the 18th century, a lot of huffing and puffing by overbearing male chauvinists,” says Bush-Bailey.

“Th e Female Wits was probably written, with malice, by George Powell of the Drury Lane Company,” says Bush-Bailey. “It was a cheap, satirical jibe at the successful women playwrights of the time, making out they were all bitching behind each others’ backs. So far as one can tell, it was just spiteful and scurrilous.”

. Item #376J

Price: $4,500.00

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10) 331j.\#781  Polwheile, Theolophilus

Aὐθέντης, Authentēs. Or A treatise of self-deniall. Wherein the necessity and excellency of it is demonstrated; with several directions for the practice of it. By Theophilus Polwheile, M.A. sometimes of Emmanuel Colledge in Cambridge, now teacher of the Church at Teverton in Devon

London: :printed for Thomas Johnson, and are to be sold by Richard Scott book-seller in Carlisle, 1658.

 

First Edition ¶. bound in mid 19th century brown calf, (48) 424 (46) pp. including 8 pp. publisher’s catalog, errata leaf at end, text clean, bright, collated complete, ownership signature of a B. Fuller in an old hand on bottom of title page, probably not that of Bishop William Fuller, but perhaps. Wing (2nd ed.), P2782; Thomason; E.1733[1]. NO US Copy. #331j. Item #781

n 1651 he took the degree of M.A. He was preacher at Carlisle until about 1655 (Dedication to Treatise on Self-deniall). In 1654 he was a member of the committee for ejecting scandalous ministers in the four northern counties of Cumberland, Durham, Northumberland, and Westmoreland. From that year until 1660, when he was driven from the living, he held the rectory of the portions of Clare and Tidcombe at Tiverton. The statement of the Rev. John Walker, in ‘The Sufferings of the Clergy,’ that he allowed the parsonage-house to fall into ruins, is confuted in Calamy’s ‘Continuation of Baxter’s Life and Times’ (i. 260–1). Polwhele sympathised with the religious views of the independents, and after the Restoration he was often in trouble for his religious opinions. After the declaration of James II the Steps meeting-house was built at Tiverton for the members of the independent body; he was appointed its first minister, and, on account of his age, Samuel Bartlett was appointed his assistant. He was buried in the churchyard of St. Peter, Tiverton, on 3 April 1689. His wife was a daughter of the Rev. William Benn of Dorchester. Their daughter married the Rev. Stephen Lobb

¶ Polwheile was a minister based mainly in Tiverton; the year after this was published, in the Restoration of 1660, he was ejected from his ministerial position for his religious views and for his sympathies with the Independents, who advocated for local control and for a certain freedom of religion for those who were not Catholic; because of this, he was often in trouble until the Declaration of Indulgence by James II in 1687, establishing freedom of religion in England (James II being Catholic). Polwheile died in 1689. Very Good.
(DNB).

Price: $1,800.00

 

This is a link to the rest of my books.

 

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