Beschreibung
Book Description: Published by Gale & Curtis of London and printed in Oxford in 1811, fourth edition. Octavo, xx + 446 pp. This copy is bound in full diced calf with raised bands and a gilt titled label on the spine with gilt rulings and blind decoration, gilt decoration to the boards, marbled endpapers and all edges and the bookbinders label of W. Whereat of Bristol is on the front pastedown. The book unbound was ten shillings and sixpence and binding must have cost twice that sum making this a costly volume. Book Condition: There is damage to the lower spine affecting that part of the front hinge but the book is otherwise firmly bound but the corners are bumped (see images). There is some light foxing, mostly in the first 20 pages. This volume of Essays was published in four editions in England and two in the USA between 1804 and 1811 but continued to be reprinted right through the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. All early copies for sale are to be found in the United States except for an odd volume of the third edition and this is the only copy of the fourth edition. The four essays in 27 letters comprise I On a Man's Writing Memoirs of Himself, II On Decision of Character, III On the Application of the Epithet Romantic and IV On Some of the Causes by Which Evangelical Religion Has Been Rendered Less Acceptable to Persons of Cultivated Taste. John Foster was the son of a weaver, born in Halifax, Yorkshire, and educated for the ministry at the Baptist college in Bristol, Foster served as a minister for a number of years in various parts of England and Dublin. In 1800 he took charge of a small congregation at Downend, near Bristol, and in February 1804 of one at Sheppard's Barton, Frome, but troubled with ill health his preaching was interrupted and becoming a full-time writer, he contributed nearly 200 articles to the Eclectic Review. His works include Essays, in a Series of Letters, and Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance, in which he urged the necessity of a national system of education. In May 1808 he married and went to live at Bourton in Gloucestershire. About a year after he recovered enough to resume occasional preaching, and towards the end of 1817 he again took charge of the congregation at Downend. In 1821 he gave it up and went to live at Stapleton, Gloucestershire. In 1822 he began to lecture fortnightly in Broadmead Chapel, Bristol; at the end of two years poor health forced him to make the lectures monthly, and in 1825, when Robert Halls began his ministry in Bristol, he dropped them. Foster became involved in a controversy between the Serampore missionaries and the committee of the Baptist Missionary Society, strongly siding with the missionaries. In 1836 his health began to give way, and his lungs became diseased. On 15 October 1843, he was found dead in bed. He was buried in the burial-ground attached to the Downend baptist chapel. A contemporary notice of Foster's Essays: I have read, with the greatest admiration, the Essays of Mr. Foster. He is one of the most profound and eloquent writers that England has produced.--Sir James Mackintosh. Extra shipping needed outside UK.
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