Confessions of an Oxonian. Embellished with thirty-six coloured Plates.

[ANONYMOUS] -

Verlag: London: J.J. Stockdale, Printer, No. 24, Opera Colonnade, 1826.

3 vols., 12mo. Thirty-six hand-coloured engraved plates by J. Findlay, with publisher s advertisements at the end of Vols. 1 and 2 (see below), the plates printed on variable paper with some browned and a few extending beyond the untrimmed text with publisher s imprints very slightly chipped. Entirely untrimmed and handsomely rebound by Philip Dusel in period-style half red morocco, spines gilt. First edition of a rollicking, very racy, and eminently readable novel, sometimes attributed to Thomas Moore, clearly for no other reason than that the "editor" signs the preface "Thomas Little. Editor of Harriette Wilson s Memoirs." The Oxonian's adventures include an interupted and nearly fatal post-masquerade moonlit assignation with the scantily-clad daughter of a count, a spirited protest at an inn in Lichfield where James Boswell is accused of sycophancy - "Boswell really adored Johnson." In India the Oxonian falls in with a dervish and explores the mysteries of Hinduism, and back in the British Isles he takes up with "a book-collector, that is to say, a bibliomaniac, a Roxburgher out and out": By Heaven! I had forgotten the black letter! O! shrine of Bodley. . . How many an ancient, black-letter Romaunt, and Tragedie, which I have, in vain, again and again sighed for! There, my young friend, there, he observed, taking, with the most delicate caution, a small, ugly, dirty, square volume, consisting of little more than six pages, there is Robine Hoode's garlande, printed by Caxton! Oh! what a treasure! Garside et al., English Novel, 1826:52, listing it under "Thomas Little" with a note that the work s "Advertisement" alleges "that the true author died of typhus" - all of which, of course, is certainly fictitious. The name "Thomas Little," the supposed editor of this book, "occurs," as a note in the Bodleian Library s catalogue entry for this book puts it, "several times in the publications of Stockdale and may be a pseudonym of the publisher." Stockdale was also the publisher of Harriette Wilson s memoirs, further mentioned in the advertisements at the end of Vol. II. The separately-paginated leaf at the end of Vol. I advertises the exhibition of the "Magnificent National Picture" of Lady Godiva, "fifteen feet by twelve. . . worth myriads of Medicean Venuses.". Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 14064

Bibliografische Details

Titel: Confessions of an Oxonian. Embellished with ...
Verlag: London: J.J. Stockdale, Printer, No. 24, Opera Colonnade, 1826.
Einband: Hardcover
Zustand: Fine
Auflage: 1st Edition