[Rarebooks] fa: LETTERS WRITTEN BY THE EARL OF CHESTERFIELD TO HIS SON 1774 - First Ed.

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auctions ending Sunday, November 18. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/bclw24r

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.


Letters written by the late Right Honourable Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, to his Son, Philip Stanhope, Esq; late Envoy Extraordinary at the Court of Dresden: Together with Several Other Pieces on Various Subjects. Published by Mrs. Eugenia Stanhope, from the Originals now in her Possession. London: Printed for J. Dodsley in Pall-Mall, MDCCLXXIV [1774]. FIRST EDITION. Two volumes,  large 4tos (29.5 x 14 cm) in period calf, rebacked, later gilt-lettered spine labels; [4], vii, [1], 568 pp.; [4], 606, [2] pp.; with the half-title pages, errata leaf and portrait frontispiece. Gulick 2; ESTC T136181.

First edition of one of the great publishing and cultural sensations of the Eighteenth Century. Though never designed for appearance in print, Chesterfield's witty, elegant, instructive letters to his son were collected and published by the earl's widow in 1774 and immediately became the definitive how-to guide for every would-be man of the world. Not everyone was enraptured, however: Samuel Johnson famously criticized the letters for teaching "the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing-master."

Scuffing and wear to the boards with some later repairs and losses to the original leather; moisture damage to the front fore-corner of vol. II resulting in staining to the front paste-down and some marginal paper loss to the bottom corner of the first few leaves; foxing to the frontispiece with very occasional light spotting to the text, light age-toning to the leaves; otherwise quite clean and sound, firmly bound. Occasional translations of some French phrases have been helpfully provided by an early owner in a neat, elegant hand. Front paste-downs with the early engraved armorial bookplates of John Nutt ("Confido").