BURKE (Edmund):

Two Letters from Mr. Burke to Gentlemen in the City of Bristol, on the Bills depending in Parliament relative to the Trade of Ireland. The Second Edition.

London: Printed for J. Dodsley..., 1778. 8vo, pp. 32, disbound. Todd 29b.

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Book number: 4680

Catalogue: Ireland

Keywords: Ireland politics prose

BURNET (John):

An Essay on the Education of the Eye   with Reference to Painting. Illustrated by Copper Plates and Wood Cuts. Second Edition.

London: James Carpenter..., 1837. 4to, pp. viii, [4], 73 [74 blank, 75 - 76 adverts], including half-title, 8 engraved plates, contemporary cloth backed boards, with paper label on front cover; slightly shaken in casing, slight water-staining of last two plates, boards rubbed, with loss of paper on upper corner of rear boards. Burnet (1784 - 1868), painter, engraver, and author, published a number of works on both the practicalities and aesthetics of painting. The above work formed part of his Treatise on Painting, published separately. Among the authors he draws upon for his comments on the aesthetics of painting are Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Reid, and Edmund Burke. He both drew and engraved the illustrations in this book.

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Book number: 1651

Catalogue: Aesthetics

Keywords: aesthetics painting prose

BURNETT (Frances Hodgson):

Little Lord Fauntleroy. Fifteenth Edition.

London: Frederick Warne and Co., 1889. 8vo, 214 x 140 mms., pp. [x], 269 [270 blank, 280 - 286 adverts], steel-engraved frontispiece, vignette on title-page, 24 other full-page engraved illustrations, from drawings by Reginald B. Birch, contemporary green cloth, with front cover illustration in gilt and spine in gilt, presentation inscription "Alice Lovett Staffurlt/ from/ Mother/ August 27th 89" on rector of frontispiece; front hinge cracked, corners and top and base of spine worn, somewhat sprung in binding, a fair to good copy. Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett (1849–1924) published this, her first children's book, as a serial in the St. Nicholas Magazine between November 1885 and October 1886, and as a book by Scribner's in New York in 1886; it has probably never been out of print since then. It was, of course, successful almost beyond belief and had the effect, unfortunate or otherwise, of parents' dressing their male sons in velvet costumes. Gainsborough's 1770 portrait Blue Boy seems to have been the model.

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Book number: 7490

Catalogue: Fiction

Keywords: fiction children

BURNETT (Thomas):

The Necessity of Impeaching the Late Ministry. In a Letter to the Earl of Hallifax. The Second Edition.

London: Printed by W. Wilkins, and Sold by J. Roberts..., 1715. 8vo (in 4s), pp. 37 [38 - 39 "Tracts Written by the Same Author," 40 blank], including half-title (soiled and dusty), disbound; verso of last leaf soiled and almost detached.

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Book number: 3062

Catalogue: Politics

Keywords: politics prose pamphlet

BURNEY (Charles):

An Account of the Musical Performances in Westminster-Abbey, And the Pantheon, May 26th, 27th, 29th; and June the 3d, and 5th, 1784. In Commemoration of Handel.

London, Printed for the Benefit of the Musical Fund; and Sold by T. Payne and Son..., 1785. FIRST EDITION. 4to, pp. [viii], xvi, 8, *1 - *8, 9 - 20, *19 - *24, 21 - 56, [1] - 41 [42 blank], [2], [43] - 139 [140 adverts, 141 Errata and Directions to the Binder, 142 blank], engraved frontispiece and eight full-page engraved plates, later 19th century half calf, marbled boards (soiled), gilt spine; ms. annotations in pencil on page 90, 3 leaves sprung, frontispiece a little foxed, corners worn, joints rubbed and very slightly cracked, but a fair to middling copy with the binder's ticket of R Wilkinson, 1 Prujean Sqaure, Old Bailey on top margin of front paste-down end-paper, as well as rubber stamp of Wallace Masland and faded bookplate of [?Mr.] Sharpe; two of the instrumental performers are surnamed Sharp, so this is perhaps a copy from one of them. Burney's enthusiasm for these musical performances led to an invitation to prepare this account, though he was rather surprised not to be paid for it. Two thousand copies of the work were printed, and it was widely praised in the journals. Samuel Johnson wrote the dedication. The Monthly Review in 1785 commented, "The sounds of these most extraordinary musical performances will, no doubt, ever live in the memory of the audiences then present; but they probably would have proved almost as evanascent as if they had died on the ear, had they now been renewed, and kept alive, by so learned and lively a chronicle." Fleeman 85.2BH/1a. Rothschild 544. Tinker 1377. Hazen 30 - 33. A short account of the life of Handel and a narrative of the preparations for this celebration can be found in The European Magazine: and London Review for March, 1784. For the binder, R. H. Wilkinson, see Charles Ramsden: London Binders, 1780 - 1840 (1956), page 150.

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Book number: 8295

Catalogue: Music

Keywords: music biography prose

BURNEY (Charles):

A General History of Music, From the Earliest Ages to the Present Period. The Second Edition [volume 1].

London, Printed for the Author: And sold by Payne and Son..., 1789, 1782, 1789, 1789. FIRST EDITION of volumes 2, 3, and 4. 4 volumes. 4to, pp. v [vi blank, vii - viii Contents], xviii, 501 [502 blank, 503 - 511 Index, 512 blank]; [iv], 597 [598 blank, 599 "Corrections and Errata," 600 blank, 601 - 610 Index]; xi [xii blank], 622 [623 - 633 Index, 634 Errata]; [iv], 1- 68, 67 - 70, 69 - 118, 117 - 128, 127 - 688 [689 - 700 Index, 701 Errata, 702 blank], engraved music throughout text, folding woodcut of "Egyptian Musical Instrument," folding plate of music in volume 1, one engraved plate in volume 2, recent quarter calf, buckram boards, new end-papers; lacks the portrait of Burney in volume 1, the frontispieces for volumes 2, 3, and 4, and 6 plates in volume 1. The first volume of Burney's History was out of print within a few weeks of publication, and Burney had decided by April of 1776 to prepare a second edition of the volume. The second edition of volume 1 takes account of a number of suggestions made by Thomas Twining. The "Dissertation" no longer features on the title-page of the second edition and becomes part of the Preface, while the "Questions and Answers" are transmuted into "Definitions." Many passages from the first edition are radically altered or omitted. When publication of the four volumes was completed in 1789, Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the reviewers. Writing in the February, 1790 issue of the Analytical Review, she said "Every lover of this captivating art, must thank the author, emphatically, for his unwearied researches, whilst the unimpassioned philosopher may coldly connect a more grand and comprehensive interest with the enquiry, and drawing metaphysical inferences from the ingenuity displayed in the progressive improvement of music, advance a step further into the terra incognita of the human mind."

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Book number: 5687

Catalogue: Music

Keywords: music prose

BURNEY (Charles). D'ARBLAY (Madame):

Memoirs of Doctor Burney, from Family Papers, and from Personal Recollections.

London: Edward Moxon..., 1832 FIRST EDITION. 3 volumes. 8vo, 212 x 130 mms., pp. xvi, 360;[iv], 400; [iv], 436 [437 printer's imprint, 438 - 440 adverts], lacking half titles, contemporary half calf, freen morocco labels, marbled boards (slightly rubbed), but a good to very good set. Charles Burney began composing his "memoirs" in August, 1782, and added to them as the years progressed. Fanny Burney, as is well known and by her own admission "committed to the Flames" most of his work, a suppression that she tried to justify on grounds of her father's supposed senility. The work is not, of course, reliable as a guide to her father's life, and much of its interest and usefulness lies in the reasons for her demonstrable dishonesty in misrepresenting her motives for destroying his papers. As Roger Lonsdale notes in his biography of Charles Burney, Fanny "devotes more space to the appearance of her own novels than to that of her father's works.... The Memoirs of Dr. Burney can indeed be taken as Fanny's last novel."

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Book number: 10476

Catalogue: Biography

Keywords: biography music prose

BURRELL [née Raymond], (Sophia, Lady Burrell):

Poems dedicated to the Right Honourable the Earl of Mansfield.

London: Printed by T. Cooper, Bow Street, Covent Garden. Sold by Leigh and Sotheby, York Street, Covent Gardedn; T. P:ayne, at the Mews Gate; and J. Borson, in Bond Street. 1793. FIRST EDITION. 2 volumes. 8vo, 207 x 122 mms., pp. [viii] vi, 286; [ii], vii [viii Errata], 303 [304], including half-titles, title-page in volume 1 in cancelled state, author identified only on title-page of volume 2, contemporary mottled calf, gilt spines (rubbed and slightly dried); ink spot on title-page of volume, slight cracking of joints (but firm), corners slightly worn, but a reasonable set, inscribed on recto of front free end-paper of volume 1 "M. Augusta Martin" and "Richard and Julia Rowley." The former is possibly M. Augusta Martin (1844 - 1889, later Mrs. H. B. Schreiner; while the second names could be those of Richard Freeman Roweley (1806 - 1854) and Elizabeth Julia Angerstein (1804 - 1870). The dedicatee is William Murray, First Earl of Mansfield (1705 - 1793). The poet and playwright Soohia, Lady Burrell [née Raymond], (1753–1802) began writing poetry at an early age, mostly light verse, but also a setting of one of the Ossianic poems, Comala, published in 1784. Roger Lonsdale, in his anthology Eighteenth-Century Women Poets (1989)suggests that she wrote mostly for her own amusement and that of her family, but that the publication of these two volumes "illustrate the taste in the period for ballads, versifications of Ossian, and poems deriving from Goethe's Werther, as well as for druids, ruins, sensibility, mice, red-breasts and other creatures as subject-matter, but she also wrote some springtly verse to friends." The word "sprightly" probably verse on the gallant Colonel who cut the "Lady's stays...to recover her from a fainting fit....and exposed her charms." John Wolcot in The Montlhly Review for 1793 wrote, "ady Burrell's poetical talents ... we will venture to say, do honour to her pen. Some of the lines, it must be confessed, are too prosaic to be called poetical: but, as they are possibly attempts at simplicity, (for Lady B. has, in a number of places, discovered powers of energy,) what critic can be so fastidious, and so destitute of taste, as not to forgive the failure? 'Ubi plura nitent, non ego paucis offendar maculis,' is a maxim with Horace, and must ever be with Monthly Reviewers. Lady Burrell has also attempted the ludicrous and the satirical, not without success; and, in several sketches from Nature, she has shewn herself a poetical Teniers."

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Book number: 9772

Catalogue: Poetry

Keywords: poetry women literature

BURRELL [née Raymond], (Sophia, Lady Burrell):

The Thymbriad, (From Xeonphon's Cyropedia.)

London: Sold by Leigh and Sotheby, York Street, Covent Garden; T. Payne, at the Mews Gate; and J. Robson, in Bond Street. 1794, FIRST EDITION. 8vo, 207 x 122 mms., pp. [iv], 154 {155 Errata, 156 blank]. BOUND WITH Telemachus. By Lady Burrell. London: Sold by Leigh and Sotheby, York Street, Covent Garden; T. Payne, at the Mews Gate; and J. Robson, in Bond Street. 8vo, 207 x 122 mms., pp. [iv], 78. 2volumes in 1, contemporary mottled calf, gilt spines (rubbed and slightly dried); joints slightly cracked (but firm), a goodish copy with the autograph of "Richard and Julia Rowley" on the verso of the front free end-paper. Lady Burrell's opening line of The Thymriad repeats Dryden's opening line in his translation of Virgil's AEnid, "Arms, and the Man I sing...." The two volumes seem to have been offered for sale separately, but The Monthly Review in 1795 , noted, "Though these two poems are published separately, we give our opinion of them jointly, because they are of the same character. They are both grounded on well-known stories; both amplify the original incidents and sentiments, in order to afford an opportunity of displaying the poet's descriptive powers; both express at large, in set speeches, the motions and passions respectively belonging to the principal characters; and both are composed in an easy kind of measure, very suitable for fictitious narrative, with no other difference than that one is with, and the other without, rhyme." In a longer review, The British Critic, and Quarterly Theological Review, also in 1795, concluded its very favourable assessment of the two poems, "Many...passages might be pointed out which are distinguished by no inconsiderable portion of genius, as well as by much warmth of imagination. We have no reluctance in pronouncing that whoever can receive delight from the perusal of elegant and harmonious versification - whoever is pleased with a poetical bouquet, where, though the different flowers which compose it vary both in fragrance and in beauty, the whole is sweet and agreeable, will have many acknowledgments to make to the author of the above publications."

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Book number: 9773

Catalogue: Classics

Keywords: classics women literature

[BURTON (John)]:

The Parish Priest. A Poem. [Translated by Dawson Warren.]

London: Printed by C. Whittingham..., Sold by A. and J. Blacks..., Faulers...; Robins...[et al], 1800. FIRST EDITION OF THIS TRANSLATION. Small 4to, 202 x 157 mms., pp. [viii], 38 [39 Notes, 40 blank], additional engraved (by T. Bonner, after a drawing by the translator) title-page, contemporary calf (worn), front cover holding by one cord, rear joint cracked, corners worn, top and base of spine chipped. With an inscription in the top margin of the dedication page, "In memory of/ Thomas Muir/ Elm Grover/ Bearsden/ Xmas 1912." John Burton ((1696 - 1771) published Sacerdos Paroecialis Rusticus at Oxford in 1757. This translation by Dawson Warren appears to be the first and only translation. The work is dedicated to Sir James Winter Lake, who was also the dedicatee of John Thomas Smith's Antiquities of London (1791 - 1800). The translator, Dawson Warren (1769 - 1838), was the vicar of Edmonton Church, the engraving of which is on the engraved title-page; he was British Chaplain in Paris during the peace negotiations of 1801 - 1802. His ms. journal of his account there was first published in 1913.

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Book number: 6816

Catalogue: Poetry

Keywords: poetry religion literature

BUSBY (Thomas):

A Catechism of Music [Souter's New Series of Catechisms], in which the Elementary Principles of the Science are fully and clearly explained; with Preliminary Instructions for the Piaon-Forte. For the Use of Schools.

London: Printed for John Souter, School Library..., 1829. FIRST EDITION. 12mo, 138 x 88 mms., pp. [ii], 97 [98 adverts], frontispiece image of keyboard, autograph "Charlotte Dempsey" on top margin of first leaf of text, contemporary quarter roan, marbled boards (both worn); last leaf detached, with hinge exposed, a rather sad copy. The singer, composer, and author Thomas Busby (1754 - 1838) was active in London, where he made his living. Many of his compositiions have been lost; only Britannia (1801) was successful, and in 1801 he received a doctorate in music from the University of Cambridge; his doctoral exercise was a thanksgiving ode on the British naval victories, thus continuing the theme of Britannia. ODNB asserts "Busby published nothing after 1828," an assertion the present work belies. The only copy that I have located is in Trinity College, Dublin, though it was republished in 1834 (Yale only).

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Book number: 9072

Catalogue: Music

Keywords: music education prose

BUSBY (Thomas):

A Complete Dictionary of Music. To which is prefixed, A Familiar Introduction to the First Principles of that Science.

London: Printed for R. Phillips, No. 71. St. Paul's Church-Yard; Sold by T. Hurst, Paternoster-Row, and by All Book and Music Sellers [T. Davison, White-Friars], no date. 1794. FIRST EDITION. Small 8vo, 156 x 92 mms., pp. xxxiii [xxxiv advert for Busby's forthcoming "History of Music, From the Earliest Times, to the Year 1800"], folding leaf of music (included in collation) at page xx, unpaginated [296], water mark "1794" visible on lower margin of D4, bound in early 18th century half olive morocco, gilt spine, marbled boards; binding a little rubbed, but a very good copy, with the binder's ticket of Rider & Hall, Bookbinder's [sic], Slater Court, Castle Street, Liverpool, on the upper margin of the front paste-down end-paper. Busby (1755-1838) was an organist and composer, turned man of letters. This work, written with the assistance of Samuel Arnold (1740-1802) is one of his earlier ones, ODNB suggests that it was published "about 1801," and other references give the date as 1786, the ESTC gives it as "ca. 1794" (the paper is water-marked 1794) and lists no earlier editions. New Grove suggests 1783 - 86, when the work was issued in parts in The New Musical Magazine. In his Preface, however, Busy refers to this printing as the first edition, and the advert on p. [xxxiv] offers "Speedily will be published...A History of Music, From the earliest Times to the Year 1800," which suggests a date after 1800 for this edition. Several other editions followed in both England and America. Busby also was responsible for the first musical periodical in England, The Monthly Musical Journal (1800), though only four numbers were published. His other works include The Grammar of Music (1818); A History of Music (1819), largely compiled from Burney and Hawkins; and a translation of Lucretius. As a composer, his themes were often literary. He set Pope's Messiah to music, apparently with some success, and then turned his attention to setting to music Gray's Progress of Poetry, Pope's Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, and a cantata from Ossian, but these were apparently never performed. He was considered something of a hack as a writer of music, and was more respected as a literary author.

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Book number: 8912

Catalogue: Music

Keywords: music dictionary prose

BUSBY (Thomas):

Concert Room and Orchestra Anecdotes of Music and Musicians, Ancient and Modern.

London: Printed for Clementi & Co..., 1825. FIRST EDITION. 3 volumes. Small 8vo, 160 x 98 mms., pp. xv [xvi blank], 304; ix [x blank], 288; x, 301 [302 List of Plates], engraved title-page (foxed) in each volume, folding engraved frontispiece and one folding engraved facsimile of autograph music and 4 engraved portraits in volume 1, engraved frontispiece of music facsimiles and composers' autograph and 3 engraved portraits in volume 2 (lacking the portrait of Purcell), engraved portrait frontispiece, other engraved portraits (lacking the portrait of Braham), and 2 folding engraved facsimiles of autograph music in volume 3, contemporary calf, with gilt crest of Signet Library on each cover, volume 3 rebacked, with gilt spine, morocco label; front cover volume 1 detached, spine worn, joints volume 2 cracked and tender. Busby (1755 - 1838) was the tenor soloist in the 1785 Handel commemoration, an engraving of which forms the frontispiece to volume 1. The Anecdotes are still useful to scholars and musicologists, as they contain information not found elsewhere.

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Book number: 8176

Catalogue: Music

Keywords: music history prose

[BUTLER (Charles)]:

Horae Biblicae.

[?London] Printed in the year 1797. FIRST EDITION. 8vo, pp. [ii], 109 [110 Errata], uncut, original boards (worn), crudely rebacked with paper, later notes on end-papers, lacks front free end-paper, title taped to board, rather a sad copy. With the autograph of Michael Joseph Quin (1796 - 1843), the travel writer and Catholic journalist and a few corrections or annotations in his hand; and notes on Butler and Quin on the front paste-down end-paper by "Gal. Barrori," dated 1960. Butler (1750 - 1832), a Catholic, entered Lincoln's Inn in 1775 but could not proceed to the bar, as he could not take the oath of supremacy. The above work is a learned and succinct commentary on the Old and New Testaments as well as the sacred texts of other religions. The previous owner of this copy, Quin, when he was editing the Monthly Review and the Catholic Journal, while supporting Catholic emancipation, might very well have made Butler's acquaintance.

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Book number: 5538

Catalogue: Bible

Keywords: Bible Catholicism prose

BUTLER (Samuel):

The Poetical Works of Samuel Butler. With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes, by the Rev. George Gilfillan.

Edinburgh: James Nichol..., 1854. 2 volumes in 1. 8vo, pp. xxvi, 258; [iii] - vi, 297 [298 blank], including half-title for first volume, contemporary polished calf, spine ornately gilt in compartments, olive morocco label, marbled edges and end-papers; lacks half-title to volume 2, joints and edges very slightly rubbed, otherwise an attractive copy.

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Book number: 3098

Catalogue: Poetry

Keywords: poetry biography literature