[Rarebooks] fa: QUARTERLY REVIEW vols. I-XX - 1809-1820 - 20 VOLUMES: COMPLETE RUN w/ INDEX

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, February 24. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/dxdcbq4

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

The Quarterly Review. Vol. I - Vol. XX. London: John Murray, 1809-1820. Twenty volumes, 8vo, bound in half calf and marbled boards, gilt titles to spines. Bindings with modest rubbing and edge-wear, a few spines with small chips to the ends; a few joints slightly cracked or starting but all the boards are secure; three volumes bound without the general title-page; leaves with occasional light spotting, mostly relegated to the first and last few leaves, otherwise the contents are quite clean and sound, firmly bound. Compiled from three different sets: the bindings are not uniform, but are similar in style.
A complete run of the first twenty volumes (vols. I-XIX plus Vol. XX, the General Index to the First Nineteen Volumes) of the Quarterly Review, one of the longest-running and most influential of British periodicals. Founded in 1809 as a Tory response to the Whigs' Edinburgh Review, the Quarterly became a British institution and a bastion of literary and political conservatism. Far more than mere book reviews, the articles are in fact scholarly, opinionated and often quite lengthy essays (some almost  book-length in themselves) on the great cultural, social, political and scientific topics of the day.

A small sampling (in no particular order) of the hundreds of important and/or otherwise interesting articles contained in these volumes:

- WILLIAM PITT & CONSERVATISM: a 64-page essay inspired by A History of the Political Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt (considered the single most important article in the early history of the Quarterly Review, and the magazine's "manifesto").
- JANE AUSTEN: Walter Scott's famous laudatory review of Austen's Emma.
- LORD BYRON: a review of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Cantos I and II, the work that made Byron famous overnight; plus reviews of The Giaour and The Bride of Abydos, etc.
- MARY SHELLEY & FRANKENSTEIN: John Wilson Croker's venomous review of Shelley's anonymously published Frankenstein ("the dreams of insanity are embodied in the strong and striking language of the insane, and the author, notwithstanding the rationality of his [sic] preface, often leaves us in doubt whether he is not as mad as his hero").
- MARIA EDGEWORTH: a review of Tales of Fashionable Life .
- ROBERT BURNS: a review by Walter Scott of Reliques of Robert Burns.
- THE REVIEW THAT KILLED KEATS: Croker's infamous review of John Keats's Endymion, arguably the most notorious book review ever published and certainly among the most memorable (and wrong-headed) articles printed by the Quarterly Review in its long and illustrious history. In the course of a mere four pages, Croker launches an attack so venomous and dismissive that Shelley  and other admirers of Keats asserted, rather melodramatically, that it led directly to the poet's untimely death two years later. Byron wrote that Keats's young life was "snuffed out by an article." Fatal or not, the review was a bitter blow to Keats. Croker begins his article with an audacious admission: "we . . . honestly confess that we have not read [the] work. Not that we have been wanting in our duty — far from it — indeed, we have made efforts almost as superhuman as the story itself appears to be, to get through it, but ... we have not been able to struggle beyond the first of the four books of which this Poetic Romance consists." And it just gets worse from there.
- LEWIS AND CLARK: reviewing A Journal of the Voyages and Travels of a Corps of Discovery, under the Command of Captain Lewis and Clarke, from the mouth of the River Missouri, through the interior parts of North America, to the Pacific Ocean.
- SANSKRIT: reviewing A Grammar of the Sanskrita Language (the first English grammar of the Sanskrit language to be printed outside India).
- CHINESE CHARACTERS: a 31-page review of Marshman's Dissertation on the Characters and Sounds of the Chinese Language; including Tables of the Elementary Characters, and of the Chinese Monosyllables (illustrated).
- NAPOLEONIC WARS: including reviews of A Letter on the Genius and Disposition of the French Government, including a View of the Taxation of the French Empire; Effets du Blocus continental sur le Commerce, les Finances, le Credit, et la Prospéritédes Isles Britanniques and Etat Politique, Civil, et Militarie de l'Empire de Russie.
- THE WAR OF 1812: (a review of Madison's War. A dispassionate Inquiry into the Reasons alleged by Mr. Madison for declaring an offensive and ruinous War against Great Britain; together with some Suggestions as to a peaceable and constitutional Mode of averting that dreadful Calamity. By a New England Farmer; 22 pp.)
- WELLINGTON & WATERLOO: poet laureate ROBERT SOUTHEY, with a 60-page review of Elliott's Life of the Most Noble Arthur Duke of Wellington, from the Period of his first Achievements in India, down to his Invasion of France, and the Peace of Paris in 1814, and a 78-page review ofOfficial Accounts of the Battle of Waterloo, Lieutenant-General Scott's Battle of Waterloo, and other titles (the battle of Waterloo having occurred the month before publication, on 15 June 1815).
- NAPOLEON IN EXILE: reviewing works including Warden's Letters written on Board His Majesty's Ship the Northumberland, and at Saint Helena; in which the Conduct and Conversations of Napoleon Buonaparte, and his Suite, during the Voyage, and the first Months of his Residence in that Island, are faithfully described and related, and Santini's Appeal to the British Nation on the Treatment experienced by Napoleon Buonaparte in the Island of St. Helena.
- PARLIAMENTARY REFORM: reviewing An Address to the People of England on the absolute necessity of a Reform of Parliament, &c.
- DAVID RICARDO & ECONOMICS: reviewing The high Price of Bullion, a Proof of the Depreciation of Bank Notes.
- THOMAS ROBERT MALTHUS: a 31-page review of Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population, as well as a 47-page review of his Statements respecting the East India College, with an Appeal to Facts, in refutation of the Charges lately brought against it in the Court of Proprietors.
- AUSTRALIA: reviewing Péron's Voyage de Découvertes aux Terres Australes ... pendant les Années 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803, et 1804 ("the only French expedition to make a major contribution to the discovery of Australia").
- NEPAL: reviewing Kirkpatrick's Account of the Kingdom of Nepaul; being the Substance of Observations made during a Mission to that Country, in the Year 1793.
- INDIA: a 65-page essay on Petrie's Statement of Facts delivered to Lord Minto, Governor General of India, &c. on his late arrival at Madras and A Reply to the Publication of William Petrie, Esq. regarding the late Transactions at Madras.
- MUNGO PARK & THE NIGER: a 31-page defense of Park's Journal of a Mission to the Interior of Africa in the Year 1805.
- THE BOUNTY MUTINY & PACIFIC EXPORATION: a 31-page review of Porter's Journal of a Cruize made to the Pacific Ocean by Captain David Porter, in the United States Frigate Essex, in the years 1812, 1813, and 1814, containing Descriptions of the Cape de Verd Islands, Coasts of Brazil, Patagonia, Chili and Peru, and of the Gallapagos Islands (containing new information on the Bounty mutiny, including transcriptions of Admiralty correspondence).
- PACIFIC EXPLORATION: poet laureate Robert Southey with a 38-page essay on Burney's Chronological History of the Voyages and Discoveries in the South Sea or Pacific Ocean; illustrated with Charts and Plates and Martin's Account of the Natives of the Tonga Islands, in the South Pacific Ocean, with an original Grammar and Vocabulary of their Language.
- EGYPT, SHELLEY & "OZYMANDIAS": a review of Legh's Narrative of a Journey in Egypt and the Country beyond the Cataracts (the review is considered a possible source of some of the imagery in Shelly's poem Ozymandias: "see especially pages 9-11 of the article: '... that one single measurement of the remnant of a statue of red granite, lying among the ruins of the Memnonium, "whose dimensions across the shoulders were twenty-five feet," ... surrounded as they were by whole colonnades of gigantic columns, some of them seventy feet high ... and by fragments of colossal statues, whose dimensions almost exceed belief. ... Among the ruins of Luxor, Pococke measured a statue of one single stone sixty feet high; but he found no traces of the statue of Osymandyas, whose foot (said to be 10 1/2 feet long) bore this inscription:—"I am the king of kings, Osymandyas—if any one would know how great I am, and where I lie, let him exceed the works I have done."'" Jonathan Cutmore, ed., Romantic Circles: Quarterly Review Archive)
- DISSENTERS: reviewing The Judgment delivered Dec. 11,1809, by the Right Hon. Sir John Nicholl, Knt. LL.D. Official Principal of the Arches of Canterbury; upon the Admission of Articles exhibited in a Cause of Office prompted by Kemp against Wickes, Clerk, for refusing to bury an Infant Child of two of his Parishioners, who had been baptized by a Dissenting Minister.
- HUMPHRY DAVY (reviewing his Elements of Chemical Philosophy; 22 pp.)
- MEDICINE: reviews of Observations on the Nature and Cure of Dropsies and Young's Introduction to Medical Literature; including a System of Practical Nosology: intended as a Guide to Students, and an Assistant to Practitioners.
- GHOSTS & APPARITIONS: reviewing Ferriar's Essay towards a Theory of Apparitions.
- And much, much more...