Current Stock - M, N (last online update: 11th May 2010)

A comprehensive work, written with the aid of a body of specialists. The third edition was thoroughly enlarged and revised.

Maclean p.210. Formerly in Edinburgh University Library, with their cancelled stamps to title and p.51.
The vocabulary was published alone, as here, at 5s.6d., or together with the Gaelic-English part at 12s.6d. The latter was also available on its own, at 7s.6d.

From the library of James Ramsay of Ochtertyre, W.S., with his signature heading the title and the front pastedown, and that of his famous son John (a non-practicing advocate) on the front free endpaper.
This edition includes a leaf of Brown's advertisements for (mainly) law books among the preliminaries, and an eight-page glossary of Scots law terms preceding the index.

Wing M.184. From the library of James Ramsay of Ochtertyre, W.S., with his signature to title-page and front pastedown.

ECSB 433; Garside et al. 1773:36. The companion-piece to The Man of Feeling, the classic sentimental novel; this tale of moral retribution has the villain as its central character.

Mackenzie's political and social reminiscences, fascinating, entertaining, amusing and anecdotal, but sometimes pretty grim, include much on his fellow radicals (sedition trials of Thomas Muir - with portrait - and others), the reform bills, poor laws, the Glasgow spy system, etc. Complete with the scarcer third volume.

Edited by Maidment from a volume in the Advocates' Library, compiled chiefly by Laurence Charteris for the use of Sir Robert Sibbald. Includes "A short Account of Scots Divines," and "Literary Correspondence, 1698-1723," including letters by Slezer, Alexander Pennicuick and Robert Wodrow.

ECSB 107. This was the first history of Scotland written in a critical spirit, and remains "one of the chief source-books for the history of Scotland." (ECSB)
The eight-page section preceding the index, separately printed and with its own title and register, contains Robert Baston's poem Metrum de Prælio apud Bannockburn, (here falsely attributed to William Baston). Baston acquired a great reputation in his own age, and is said to have been taken to Scotland by Edward I to sing his praises at the Siege of Stirling (1304). It is almost certain that he was taken on a similar errand by Edward II, the expedition to relieve Stirling that resulted in the Battle of Bannockburn. He was captured by Bruce, and forced to sing to Edward's defeat as the price of his freedom. Bower's Scotichronicon described these verses as "worthy for their goodness to be set on a candlestick."

An important edition, incorporating the author's final revisions: so substantial that when published separately to supplement earlier editions they formed a volume of 327 pages.

One of Christopher Greenwood's early productions, on the scale of one inch to a mile, a highly detailed and accurate map with a fine large vignette of the old city of Durham with its imposing cathedral. The volume has at some time been in a damp environment, which has caused a little faint discolouration and cockling to the maps, none of it offensive.

A splendid county map, on the imposing scale of two inches to a mile.

A splendid large-scale map, 197 x 200 cms., with three additional sections 21 x 86 cms. at tail extending the map to include the area from Verona in the east to Karlstadt (Karlovac) in the west, thus embracing the Gulf of Venice (and so indeed all that part of Europe between the North Sea and the Mediterranean). The imprint is on the centre west sheet, concealed by the silk trim.

Excellent large-scale map of the Lothians, "a substantial improvement on earlier maps" (Moir), and scarce. It was engraved by Kitchin on six sheets approximately 43x51cm., and is either found bound into a folio volume or dissected and mounted as here. The inset plan of Edinburgh, found at lower right and measuring 32x43cm., on a scale of one inch to 500 feet, is substantial enough to survive in a few separate examples as described in William Cowan's The Maps of Edinburgh (revised edition, 1932, no.13a). It includes the projected New Town according to Craig's Plan as far as Queen Street, and the southern suburbs to the Meadows. At the east end of the New Town some buildings are shown as completed.
It provides a superb historical record of Edinburgh and the Lothians at the pinnacle of the Scottish Enlightenment, revealing significant patterns of population, trades and industries, land ownership and use, in a period of physical and political developments: a fascinating socio-economic picture.

Moir i/p.212. On a scale of 3½ inches to a mile, this is the largest-scale map of Scotland published before the one-inch Ordnance Survey. The sheets, if trimmed and joined, would form a single large map nearly 8 by 7 feet, or some 2.5 by 2 metres.

On a scale of nearly two inches to a mile. The shire of Linlithgow (now more familiarly known as West Lothian) embraces the old parishes of Torphichen, Bathgate, Whitburn, Bo'ness, Kirkliston, Linlithgow, Uphall, Abercorn, Dalmeny, Cramond, etc.

i. By the twelfth-century ecclesiastic, author and wit to whose authority the main body of prose Arthurian literature has at some time been assigned. This is the most authentic of all the works which have been attributed to Maps, and the most important. "It is the book in which this remarkable man seems to have amused himself with putting down his own sentiments on the passing events of the day, along with the popular gossip of the courtiers with whom he mixed.... In fact, the whole book is one mass of contemporary anecdote, romance, and popular legend...." (Preface)
ii. Wills from the 15th to 17th century, mostly in English, and including a vast amount on everyday possessions and matters, frequently concerning foodstuffs and the kitchen.

H.D. Forbes copy. The history of the Caliphs from Mahomet to Mostazem. Lessing translated it into German in 1753.

Bookplate of the eminent Glasgow bibliophile David Murray.

Blackmer 1134. "Coghill Family Records" bookplate, and a ducal crest in gilt at head of spine. Uncommon.
"The Coghill collection was composed of two collections - that of de Lalo and that of Bonnet. The de Lalo collection was acquired originally by de Rossi, who had 39 engravings made of the most interesting of the vases. When Coghill decided to publish his collection, he used the 39 plates made by de Rossi and added 13 new plates from his other acquisitions. The text includes three letters from Gherardo de Rossi to Millingen. The Coghill collection passed eventually into the hands of Henry Englefield and Thomas Hope." (Navari) The catalogue compiler, James Millingen, was a connoisseur of the antique: "He bought antiquities with considerable discernment, and supplied private collections and most of the important museums of Europe...with fine examples of ancient art." (Oxford DNB)

Gaskell 9 & 10. Subscriber's copy, with the signature of West Hyde "of the 1st Regm. of Guards" on each title-page, together with the date 1765 and the note Subscribed for in 1757. Other subscribers include Erasmus Darwin, William Blackstone, Isaac Norris "Speaker of the Assembly of Pensylvania," and William Robertson. Other names are equally arresting: Sergius Swellengrebel Jun., Crommelin Pigou, Fettiplace Nott, Rev. Other Philpot, Ferdinando De Mierre and Clotworthy Upton, are just a sample.
The 72-page "Life of Milton," usually found in the second volume, is here logically bound before Paradise Lost.

Cohn 570.
"The present Edition of 'The Life of Mansie Wauch' has been carefully revised; and it may be here proper to mention, that Chapters [11, 22, 23, 24 and 27], are now for the first time incorporated with the book.
Of the Illustrations by GEORGE CRUIKSHANK - What whall we say? Nothing. They speak for themselves." (Advertisement)

Armorial bookplates of Alexander Fullarton Lindsay Carnegie of Spynie & Boysack.

From the Gladstone library at Fasque, with Thomas Gladstone's armorial bookplates.
Not quite the complete works, comprising: Iliade di Omero, traduzione (2 Vols., 1825, with portrait); Tragedie (1826); Poesie Varie [e Satire di A. Persio Flacco, traduzione] (2 Vols., 1826); and Dialoghi (2 Vols., 1827).

Garside et al. 1796: 67. From the Gladstone library, with John Gladstone's contemporary signature (at "Lpool") on each title-page, and later Fasque bookplate on each front pastedown.

Gaskell 626.

Babson 115; Roscoe J348 (1). The text ends half-way down page 125, and is followed by an extensive series of advertisements for Newbery's other juvenile works.
A landmark book for children, written - almost certainly by Newbery himself, partly modelled upon Locke's Elements of Natural Philosophy - in a playful style that made science intelligible to young readers or auditors. Though arranged as a series of lectures, there is dialogue between "Tom" and his audience, who constantly interrupt and question him. Of course he always wins his argument, but does so in an entertaining way, using everyday objects and examples to illustrate natural laws. His discourses survey the entire range of eighteenth century natural philosophy, as listed in the contents: Matter and Motion (magnetism, electricity); the Universe, particularly the Solar System (the sun, planets and stars, and the velocity of light); the Air, Atmosphere, and Meteors (the elements, earthquakes, weather, rainbows); Mountains, Springs, Rivers and the Sea; Minerals, Vegetables and Animals; and the Five Senses of Man, and his Understanding.
The Newtonian System of "Tom Telescope" proved a huge success, becoming a standard for nearly a century and translated into several languages; but the first edition is distinctly scarce, with no copy found in auction records and ESTC recording only three locations in the British Isles and six in North America. The present copy is a very fresh example.

A complete run of 156 four-page issues for the year (the Courant was published thrice-weekly, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays). The newspaper's content is much as one might anticipate, albeit with advertisements for property, emigrant ships, books, and railway excursions dominating the front page. Much of the international news was by this time coming in by international telegraph.

Like its earlier companion-work the Literary Anecdotes (1812-15, see below), a monumental work and a major resource for students of the eighteenth century. Complete sets are uncommon due to the decades it took to be completed, with the last four volumes published posthumously by the author's son, John Bowyer Nichols.

Begun as an enlargement of his Biographical and Literary Anecdotes of William Bowyer (which explains the volume i "Preface to the Second Edition"), but soon developing into this monumental work, an indispensable resource for students of the eighteenth century.
Volume vi is termed "Volume VI. Part I." It was originally intended that "Part II" would provide the index, but in the event the work expanded to nine volumes with the index to the whole forming volume vii.