Current Stock - H, I & J (last online update: 11th May 2010)

Zachs 256. Anatomist, physiologist and botanist turned Christian moralist.

Inscribed on title verso: For Miss Cleghorn from her affectionate Cousin The Author. Hamilton was physician to the Royal Infirmary, known equally for his professional skill, benevolent character and eccentric clothing: he dressed in the fashion of his youth to the end of his days, cocked hat and all.

In the 1809 edition, Walter Scott remarked that "this spirited and valuable piece of biography" was first printed in 1764 at Strawberry Hill, but that Walpole first added his dedication to the 1770 London edition.

Includes many of Hogg's ephemeral and rare pieces, e.g. "On the Lifting of the Banner of Buccleuch."

The jacket blurb to the new Stirling-South Carolina collected edition terms this collection of rural tales and anecdotes "a major landmark in the history of Scottish literature." The first edition is notably scarce.

When the second edition of Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland appeared in 1586-87, parts of it dealing with Anglo-Scottish relations, the Babington plot, and Leicester's expedition to the Low Countries, aroused Queen Elizabeth's disapproval and were ordered to be removed. The cancellations comprised pages 421-24, 433-36 and 443-50 of volume ii, and 1328-31, 1419-1538 and 1551-74 of volume iii. This is one of two editions of the cancelled or castrated passages published in 1723: another edition appeared in 1728. See Keith I. Maslen "Three Eighteenth Century Reprints of the Castrated Sheets in Holinshed's Chronicles" in The Library 5th Series xiii (1958) pp.120-24.

Presentation to George Kinloch from the editor Robert Pitcairn, inscribed "with best regards" on a front blank and with Kinloch's bookplate on the front pastedown.

Containing the Iliad in volumes i-ii, Odyssey in iii-iv, and the hymns, epigrams and fragments in volume v. Dibdin remarks upon the beauty and accuracy of this Glasgow edition.

Gaskell 319. With a portrait bust of Homer from an earlier edition of his works bound-in as frontispiece.
Probably the finest production of the Foulis Press, and one of the finest classics ever produced, edited by Professors James Moor and George Muirhead. "The great Homer, in double pica and all the majesty of a folio page, was produced...in 1756 and 1758.... For beauty as well as for accuracy, these splendid volumes can hardly be surpassed. Bishop Lowth could find but one single error, the omission of an 'iota' subscribed to a dative.... 'As the eye is the organ of fancy,' writes Gibbon, 'I read Homer with more pleasure in the Glasgow edition. Through that fine medium, the poet's sense appears more beautiful and transparent'." (David Murray, Robert & Andrew Foulis and the Glasgow Press, Glasgow Bib.Soc., 1913)

Wolff 3252. Baronial bookplate ("Time Tryeth Truth") on volume i front pastedown.
The author was Dean of Worcester and brother of the "silver-fork" novelist Theodore Hook. Percy Mallory was admired by Scott, who in a letter to Daniel Terry of January 1824 remarked that he had been "much pleased" by it.

Keynes p.73. Handsomely printed "Oxford Classic," from the Gladstone library at Fasque, with bookplates.

Abbey Travel 185. A relatively large copy: the aquatint title imprint to volume i is shaved, and that to volume ii almost entirely cropped; but Abbey's copy, by comparison, had both completely cropped away.
With caustic marginal notes neatly pencilled in the margins of pages 72 & 147, volume ii: e.g. "You pompous ignoramus!", and, of Ireland's positive remarks of the painter David, "Right for once, you clown.... And he adored Napoleon you patronizing snob."

An odd pairing from the Gladstone library at Fasque, with bookplate.
i. With an impressive list of subscribers, many in Malta and the author's native Glasgow, and including John and David Gladstone. Irvine was Physician to His Majesty's Forces, and his observations on Sicily and Sicilian life were made there between 1808 and 1810; in which year he was posted to Malta, where he died of cholera in 1811. The Letters are preceded by a 40-page memoir.
ii. The seventh edition of this immensely popular satire on the picturesque movement, in which the plates have evidently been re-touched (assuming not actually "new," as stated on the title), and the colouring is about as good as it gets.

Wolff 3525. From the Gladstone library at Fasque, with bookplates.

Henrey 883. With contemporary inscription "Charleton" and later elaborate bookplate of Robert Gordon Gordon-Gilmour of Liberton and Craigmillar.
John Reid's Scots Gard'ner (1683) was the first book devoted to gardening published in Scotland; the next author to write for the Scottish climate was James Justice, whose Scots Gardiners Director was published anonymously in 1754 (and re-issued, with cancel title terming it a "second edition," in 1759). Blanche Henrey, in British Botanical and Horticultural Literature before 1800, devotes several pages to Justice, noting that subsequent editions were issued under the title of The British Gardener's Director not just in search of a wider market but because the work was equally suited to the gardeners of northern England. It continued to be highly thought of in the nineteenth century, Samuel Curtis (editor of the 1822 Florist's Directory of James Maddock) citing it as as "one of the most original works on gardening" ever produced. As noted by Henrey, some copies of this true second edition of 1764 contain the same two plates as appeared in the first edition, but they are not present in this copy.

Wing J.1288; Case 200; Grolier 331; Macdonald 30a. Covers with gilt arms of the prominent politician Thomas Coningsby, first earl of Coningsby (1657-1729), for whom see Oxford DNB; later calligraphic booklabel and pencil notes of Douglas Grant, soldier and scholar, who edited a selection of Dryden's works for the Reynard Library.
Each of the satires is preceded by a fly-title and argument, and followed by explanatory notes. Five of Juvenal's satires (I, III, VI, X & XVI) were translated by Dryden himself, one each by his eldest sons John and Charles, two by Tate, one each by Bowles, Stepney, Harris, Congreve, Power and Creech, and one (anonymously) by Duke. All of Persius was translated by Dryden, prefixed by Congreve's commendatory poem. The dedication, to the Earl of Dorset, is one of Dryden's most delightful pieces of literary criticism.