[Rarebooks] fa: IGNORAMUS 1787 - LORD CHANCELLOR'S COPY of this LEGAL SATIRE

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, along with other 17th, 18th, & 19th-century titles, auctions ending Sunday, Sept. 23. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/8trnfxv

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.


George Ruggle; John Sydney Hawkins (ed.): Ignoramus, Comoedia; Scriptore Georgio Ruggle, A.M. Aulæ clarensis, apud cantabrigienses, olim socio; nunc denuo in lucem edita cum notis  historicis et criticis: quibus insuper præponitur vita auctoris, et subjicitur glossarium vocabula forensia dilucide exponens: accurante Johanne Sidneio Hawkins, Arm. Londini [London]: Prostat venalis apud T. Payne et filium… 1787. First edition thus. Text in English and Latin. Bound in full calf, 8vo; viii, cxxii, [2], 319, [1] p.; engraved frontispiece (by Grignion after Stothard) and woodcuts. ESTC T154171.

The first edition with the copious explanatory notes and "Life of the Author" by John Sydney Hawkins, eldest son of Samuel Johnson's old friend, Sir John Hawkins. Also includes an appendix and glossary. Ignoramus, a popular university comedy first performed in 1615 for James I, was an aptly titled satire of pettifogging lawyers and their forensic jargon. It had gone through at least nine editions prior to this one, all of them, according to Hawkins, "failures." Fittingly, considering the subject matter, this copy is from the library at Encombe House, Dorset, home of John Scott (1751-1838), 1st Earl of Eldon and Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, with his ink initials ("J.S.") and a bookplate bearing the family's heraldic devices and motto (Sit sine labe decus: "Let honour be without stain"). Eldon was a close adviser to both George III and George IV, and one of the pre-eminent figures in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century English politics, successively Solicitor General, Attorney General, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and, ultimately, Lord Chancellor, holding that title, with only a year's break, for twenty-six years.

Wear to the binding edges and rubbing to the spine, front hinge cracked but board is secure; foxing to the frontispiece and, less noticeably, the last few leaves, light corner crease to several leaves; otherwise the contents are very clean and crisp, firmly bound.