KER (John), of Kerland:

Memoirs of John Ker, of Kersland in North Britain Esq; Contain ing His Secret Transactions and Negotiations in Scotland, England, the Curt of Vienna, Hanover, and other Foreign Parts. With An Account of the Rise and Progress of the Ostend Compnany in the Austrian Netherlands. Published by Himself.

London: Printed [for Henry Curll] in the Year 1726. 8vo, 195 x 113 mms., pp. [v] vi - xi [xii advwets], iv, 180 [181 - 184 index], contemporary calf; jitns cracked andtender, lacks labels, corners worn. This is part one of Ker's memoirs, which eventually extended to three volumes. Designated by OCLC as a "spy," John Ker, of Kersland [formerly John Crawfurd] (1673–1726), assumed the arms and title of John Ker of Kersland in 1697. His various activities in politics, war, education, etc. didn't enhance his fortune, and he found himself in the Kings' Bench Debtor Prison; before dieing there in 1726, he met Edmund Curll,imprisoned for publishing obscene books. The encounter led to Curll's publishing Ker's memoirs. Curll had not acquired Ker's permission before his death, and the texts were published by his son. "Shortly after the final volume of Ker's Memoirs was published, Curll and his son were both arrested; though Henry was quickly released, Curll stayed in prison from November 1726 to 12 February 1728. At that point he was fined 25 marks apiece for the publication of The Nun in her Smock and the treatise on flogging and, more ominously, he was sentenced to an hour in the pillory for the Ker Memoirs. Such a sentence often resulted in the prisoner's death, as the public was encouraged to abuse the prisoner in whatever manner they wished. But on his pillory day, which was 13 February, he arranged to have a broadside printed and distributed to the crowd stating that his punishment was due to his having displayed his loyalty to the much beloved Queen Anne; when his hour was up, the crowd carried him off on their shoulders" (ODNB). Sabin, 37600.

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Book number: 9764

Catalogue: Autobiography

Keywords: autobiography politics PROSE

MITFORD (Mary Russell):

Recollections of a Literary Life; or, Books, Places, and People

London: Richard Bentley..., 1852. FIRST EDITION. 3 volumes. Large 8vo, 185 x 113 mms., pp.xi [xii blank], 323 [324 blank]; [iv], 302; vii [viii blank], 296, contemporary calf, gilt spines, red and green morocco labels; lacking the numbering label on volume, spines a bit rubbed, top of spine volume 3 chipped, but a goodish set, with various newspaper cuttings loosely inserted, as well as a short piece of verse by a previous owner. John L. Idol, Jr. in "Mary Russell Mitford: Champion of American Literature" (Studies in the American Renaissance, 1983) writes, "Mary Russell Mitford overcame an early distaste for American literature and worked tirelessly to support the careers of many American authors. Prompted by her disappointment with American authors, she anticipated in 1818 Sidney Smith's notorious charge against the state of arts in America. Writing to one of her many correspondents, Mitford asserted that Americans 'are a second-hand, pawnbrokers-shop kind of nation - a nation without literature, without art, and totally unconscious of the beautiful nature by which they are surrounded.' But she was to changer her mind when she later read more works by American authors, began to meet them and their publishers, and started to exchange letters with them. She could even proudly claim, before her death and with considerable justice, that few English writers had done as much as she to promote American literature in England. Her advocacy of American writers appeared in numerous letters and in Recollections of a Literary Life (1853), an autobiographical and critical work containing selecti8ons from her favorite writers,"

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Book number: 9532

Catalogue: Autobiography

Keywords: autobiography women literature

PSALMANAZAR (George):

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.

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Book number: 10185

Catalogue: Autobiography

Keywords: autobiography fiction literature PROVENANCE

WAKEFIELD (Gilbert):

Memoirs of the Life of Gilbert Wakefield, B. A. Formerly Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge.... Written by Himself, A New Edition, with his Lates Corrections, and Notes by the Editors. To which is sukbjoined, An Appendix of Original Letters.

London: Printed for J. Johnson..., 1804 2 volumes. Large 8vo, 208 xz 126 mms., pp. xvi [xvii - xx Contents], 560; [iv], 531 [532 Errata], bound in later quarter calf, gilt spines, marbled boards, with the small book ticket of Edward John Kenney on the recto of the front free end-paper of each volume and the bookplate of Edwin Wilkins Field on the recto of the following leaves; lacks portrait, but a very good set. The biblical scholar and religious controversialist,Gilbert Wakefield (1756 - 1801) was a distinguished scholar at Warrington Academy. One of his major achievements was a new translation of the New Testament, published in 1791. He did not, however, concentrate on Biblical texts, but published, for example, a still useful edition of Alexander Pope's translation of Homer in 1796, and as ODNB records, "inally, his massive three-volume edition of Lucretius (1796–7), published at his own expense and dedicated to Charles James Fox, established Wakefield as one of the two leading British scholars of his time, the other being Richard Porson. Unlike Porson, however, Wakefield was excessively fond of emendation, always worked in great haste, and rarely took time for revision. Thus, although his critical remarks can show considerable brilliance and an unusual awareness of continental advances in scholarship (Wakefield seems to have been among the first Englishmen to promulgate F. A. Wolf's conclusions about Homer), his work is riddled with errors and was largely dismissed by the British Academy within a few years of his death." An earlier work, Memoirs of the Life of Gilbert Wakefield, published in 1792, to which Joseph Priestley, Anna Barbauld, and Mary Hays contributed, provides much of the material for this 1804 work, edited by John Towill Rutt and Arnold Wainewright.

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Book number: 9819

Catalogue: Autobiography

Keywords: autobiography biography prose