Memoirs of **** Commonly known by the Name of George Psalmanazar; A Reputed Native of Formosa. Written by himself In order to be published after his Death. Containing An Account of his Education, Travels, Adventures, Connections, Literary Productions, and pretended Conversion from Heathenism to Christianity; which last proved the Occasion of his being brought over into this Kingdom, and passing for a Proselyte, and a Member of the Church of England.

Dublin: Printed for P. Wilson, J. Exshaw, E. Watts, B. Cotter, J. Potts, and J. Williams. M,DCC,LXV. 1765. FIRST DUBLIN EDITION. 12mo, 160 x 95 mms., pp. [iv], 234, later 18th century calf, panelled in blind, spine with raised bands, sides with blind fillet borders. A very good to fine copy, with the autograph "L. Harrison Matthews" and the armorial book plate of John Euan Davies on the front paste-down end-paper, and a leaf of notes, written horizontally on the leaf before the title-page, head "Madam Piozzi." This supposititious account of George Psalmanazar (1679-1763), born to Roman Catholic parents in the south of France, is as amusing as it is unreliable. He was not a "Native of Formosa," but he did publish a book on the island, Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa (1704). Robert DeMaria, Jr., in his Oxford DNB entry, astutely compares him to some other eighteenth-century figures whose imagination was inversely proportional to facts in their lives: "The obvious cultural milieu in which to place Psalmanazar is the impostors and forgers of the eighteenth century, including William Lauder, Thomas Chatterton, James MacPherson, and Richard Savage." Seeing genius in the work, another scholar, Benjamin Breen, in an online article from 2018, concludes the following: "Psalmanazar's own religiously-motivated condemnation of his imposture has strongly influenced later authors' take on his life. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, authors lampooned the 'false Formosan' as little more than a common charlatan. Having spent several years in the literary company of Psalmanazar, though, I'm left with little doubt that he was a sort of genius. His invented Formosan language was so internally consistent that it continued to fool linguistic scholars throughout the nineteenth century. And while his Description is hardly a rival to Defoe or Swift as a literary work, Psalmanazar's authorship of himself was a masterpiece. His life, as they say, was his art" (Benjamin Breen, "Made in Taiwan? How a Frenchman Fooled 18th-Century London", in the online journal The Public Domain Review). The three provenance markings in this copy are notable. The first is a full eight-line manuscript poem (neatly written on the leaf preceding the title-page) titled "Madam Piozzi", which the copyist and previous owner has signed "IED" and dated "23 / 10 / 61." The copyist ascribes the poem to "Peter Pindar" (a.k.a. the immensely-popular satirical poet John Wolcot), citing the source as a work titled "Bozzy and Piozzi, or the British Biographers. A Town Eclogue" found in "Vol. 1 p. 262". Bozzy is of course James Boswell, and Piozzi is Hester Lynch Piozzi (who, notably, was born in Wales and was very proud of her Welsh ancestry). Both Boswell and Piozzi were, of course, friends and biographers of Samuel Johnson. The second provenance is the fine armorial bookplate of "John Evan Davies", with his Welsh motto in a scroll, "Ffyddlon a Chyfiawn", which means, "Faithful and Righteous." This a rare bookplate. There is no plate for John Evan Davies recorded in Howe's catalogue of the Franks Bequest. Presumably this is the plate noted, briefly, in E. D. Jones, The Welsh Book-plates in the Collection of Sir Evan Davies Jones, Bart., M.P. of Pentower, Fishguard: A Catalogue, with Biographical and Descriptive Notes (1920), but Jones says nothing about the plate beyond giving the tripartite name of its owner and noting the plate is nineteenth-century armorial in nature (p. 17). It must be said that this is very likely the bookplate of the nineteenth-century Welsh poet John Evan Davies (1850-1929), who also wrote under the Welsh poetic name "Rhuddwawr". The Dictionary of Welsh Biography and Wikipedia have articles on him, the former noting, among other things, that Davies "won the crown at the national eisteddfod of 1903". An (incomplete) list of his publications is in Bibliotheca Celtica (1919), p. 45. Surely the plate affixed to the pastedown of this copy of Psalmanazar's Memoirs is Rhuddwawr's bookplate, but I cannot find it so noted in the literature. As a bonus we note that the the third provenance marking, is the distinctive inscription of the highly distinguished zoologist Leonard Harrison Matthews, F.R.S. (1901-1986), who was a formidable bibliophile. Nigel Bonner, in the Oxford DNB, after outlining many adventures and accomplishments, does not neglect to say that Matthews "amassed a notable library". ESTC T136712. Block, The English Novel, page 192. This first Dublin edition of Psalmanazar's Memoirs from 1765 is rare in commerce, with the London editions being far more common.