[Rarebooks] fa: TACITUS - WORKS - Arthur Murray 1793/4 vols. - FOLDING MAPS

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auctions ending Sunday, May 13. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/7djbx8s

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.


Tacitus; Arthur Murphy (trans.): The Works of Cornelius Tacitus; by Arthur Murphy, Esq. With an Essay on the Life and Genius of Tacitus; Notes, Supplements, Maps. London: Printed for G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1793. FIRST EDITION. Four volumes, large 4tos (29 cm), bound full period calf, ruled in gilt, with gilt-lettered spine labels, marbled endpapers; 549, 536, 539, 568 pp.; five engraved folding maps and plans. ESTC T96047.


First edition of this massive, handsomely produced translation, complete with all five folding maps and plans executed by Robert de Vaugondy [the younger], Royal Geographer and Fellow of the Royal Academy at Nantz. Arthur Murphy (1727-1805) was a successful and prolific playwright as well as a barrister, translator and editor. A friend to both Samuel Johnson and Henry Thrale, he is credited with introducing Johnson to the Thrales, in 1765, and he wrote An Essay on the Life and Genius of Samuel Johnson in 1792. "This is a book of great intrinsic worth; and not only contains an excellent translation of what remains of the Roman Historian, but the lost parts are supplied by original compositions,  which connect and complete the whole" (Bibliotecha Britannica). "An elegant but too paraphrastic version" (DNB).

Bindings rubbed, dried and worn, with bumping and wear to the corners, spines darkened and chipped with some loss to the ends; hinges cracked with the boards held by the cords; leaves evenly age-toned with intermittent light traces of foxing, a few occasional stains, some offsetting from and to the folding maps; otherwise contents are generally quite clean and crisp. Bound without the half-titles. With the contemporary ownership signatures of "Thomas Raikes, January 1798." One can hope (and not without reason) that this is the young, wealthy, Eton-educated diarist and quintessential Regency dandy, Thomas Raikes (1777-1848), lifelong friend of Beau Brummell and fellow-traveler of Scrope Davies, "Poodle" Byng, et al. One can't be absolutely certain without comparing these signatures against Raikes's autograph in the betting book at White's (few appeared there more often), but supporting our speculative provenance, or at least not disproving it, is the presence on the front endpapers of the small labels of the late-Georgian London bookbinder Dillon, of Chelsea (fl. 1790-1805, according to the Exeter Working Papers in Book History).