[Rarebooks] fa: JOHN HOWARD - ACCOUNT of the PRINCIPAL LAZARETTOS IN EUROPE - 1789

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, along with other 17th, 18th, & 19th-century titles, auctions ending Sunday, October 7. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/8d298wt

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.


John Howard: An Account of the Principal Lazarettos in Europe; with Various Papers Relative to the Plague: Together with Further Observations on Some Foreign Prisons and Hospitals; and Additional Remarks on the Present State of Those in Great Britain and Ireland. London: Printed by William Eyres; and sold by T. Cadell, J. Johnson, C. Dilly, and J. Taylor, in London, MDCCLXXXIX [1789]. FIRST EDITION. Large 4to (29.5 x 24.5 cm; 11 5/8 x 9 1/2 in.) in period mottled calf, sympathetically rebacked in modern calf with gilt-lettered spine label; [6] + 259 + [15] pp; with the half-title, directions to the bookbinder, engraved plates (most folding) and folding table. ESTC T115289; Garrison Morton 1601.

With 21 (of 22) copper-engraved plates, including 15 plans (11 folding) and 5 large folding views, plus one large folding double-page engraved table; lacking plate 22, View of a proposed Lazaretto. Occasional light foxing and offsetting to the plates, short tear to the central fold of some of the larger plates (the large folding table with a few old paper repairs to the verso and more extensive spotting and splitting at the folds); mild even toning to the text leaves, a few corners lightly bumped; otherwise contents are clean and sound, firmly bound. Front paste-down with the armorial bookplate of Sir Claud Alexander, Ballochmyle [Ayrshire, Scotland]. Fittingly, considering the book's subject, Ballochmyle House, home of Robert Burns's "Bonnie Lass O’ Ballochmyle," was eventually turned into a hospital at the beginning of World War II.

A pioneering work by the late-18th-century traveling philanthropist and reformer John Howard (1726-1790) who had first made a name for himself with his epochal State of the Prisons in England and Wales (1777). Here he brings his reforming zeal to an examination of hospitals, quarantine houses and mental hospitals in Britain and Europe. He also spends considerable time revisiting the prisons he'd examined in his earlier travels; in most cases he remains singularly unimpressed, as seen in his description of Marshalsea Prison: "No alteration in this ruinous prison… Mrs. Marson, the widow of the late deputy marshal… lets some small rooms to prisoners at 3s. a week, and other rooms to person who are not prioners; here is a drunken turnkey; and spirituous liquors are sold as common as beer. Within the prison is an alehouse (or tap) where there are frequent scenes of riot and debauchery…"

In addition to An Account of the Principal Lazarettos in Europe, the sections include: Proposed Regulations and a New Plan for a Lazaretto; Papers Relative to the Plague; An Account of Foreign Prisons and Hospitals; Scotch Prisons & Hospitals; Irish Prisons & Hospitals; Charter Schools in Ireland; English Prisons and Hospitals; Hulks on the Thames; Remarks on Penitentiary House; Remarks on the Gaol-Fever; etc.