Item #8017 Lettres historiques et philologiques du comte d’Orreri, sur la vie et les ouvrges de Swift. Poure servir de supplément au Spectateur Moderne de Steele. Orrery, Earl of John Boyle.
Lettres historiques et philologiques du comte d’Orreri, sur la vie et les ouvrges de Swift. Poure servir de supplément au Spectateur Moderne de Steele.
Lettres historiques et philologiques du comte d’Orreri, sur la vie et les ouvrges de Swift. Poure servir de supplément au Spectateur Moderne de Steele.

Lettres historiques et philologiques du comte d’Orreri, sur la vie et les ouvrges de Swift. Poure servir de supplément au Spectateur Moderne de Steele.

A Londres, et se trouve à Paris: Chez Lambert, 1753. First edition in French of Orrery’s Remarks on the Life and Writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift, published a year after the English edition. Engraved frontisportrait. Back joint beginning to crack. Wormhole in last fifty pages of text, grazing some letters, but with no serious lost. Aside from that, a very good, attractive copy. Full contemporary French speckled calf. Gilt spine with morocco label, edges sprinkled red. Twelvemo. [8], 352 pp. Item #8017

Orrery’s (1707-1762) work on Swift is the first attempt at a biography of Jonathan Swift (1667-1745). Orrery was a friend of Swift’s, and though the closeness of their relationship has been questioned, Swift entrusted to Orrery the manuscript to his Four Last Years of the Queen for delivery to Dr. King in Oxford, and Orrery was the go-between used by Pope to get his letters to Swift. On his death, Swift left Orrery a portrait and some silver plate. The English edition of Orrery’s biography sold some 7,500 copies within a month. This French edition was translated by François Lacombe.

This is an uncommon book: ESTC lists nine copies, three in North America (Cornell, McMaster, and the Huntington Library). Teerink 1333.

Price: $750.00

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