[Rarebooks] fa: THE BEE or LITERARY WEEKLY INTELLIGENCER 1790-93 - 15 vols.

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auctions ending Sunday, October 12. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/oaeylwk

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.


James Anderson (ed.): The Bee, or Literary Weekly Intelligencer, Consisting of Original Pieces, and Selections from Performances of Merit, Foreign and Domestic, A Work calculated to disseminate useful Knowledge among all ranks of people at a small expense. Edinburgh: Printed by Mundell and Son, Parliament Stairs, 1791-93. Fifteen volumes bound in ten volumes; 8vo (19 cm); early quarter cloth and marbled boards; folding tables, copper-engraved plates and woodcut illustrations. ESTC P1970.

An incomplete run of the first fifteen quarterly volumes of this uncommon Scottish periodical, containing weekly issues dating from December 22, 1790, to June 16, 1793. Includes articles on economics, British and European political history, natural history, the arts, travel, science and medicine, and assorted curiosities, as well as  biographies of notable persons, book reviews, short stories, and poetry. Illustrated with copper-engraved plates and woodcuts. The first volume contains the Advertisement, Prospectus, and address "To foreign correspondents". Bindings with wear and bumping to the edges and corners, rubbing to the boards; occasional small spots, soiling and light creases to the leaves, staining as if from lamp oil to ca. 10 leaves in vol. XV; else generally quite clean and sound, firmly bound. An incomplete run, bound without a number of issues and copper plates; three leaves with portions excised by a previous owner.

A random sampling of the contents:
	- Cursory Hints and Anecdotes of the late Doctor William Cullen of Edinburgh (multi-part, illustrated with a portrait).
	- On Revenue Laws.
	- The Ocelot.
	- The Lem[m]ing, or Lapland Marmot.
	- Receipt for Making Sour Crout.
	- Anecdotes tending to throw light on the character and opinions of the late Adam Smith, L.L.D.—author of The Wealth of Nations…
	- On the Test Act.
	- On the Improvement of Chemical Arts.
	- A Description of Norfolk Island.
	- A new and simple Mode of Musical Notation (illustrated with woodcuts).
	- Interesting Intelligence for Poor Highlanders.
	- Discovery of the Man with the Iron Mask.
	- A List of 186 of the most considerable Towns in the known World, with the number of inhabitants contained in each, alphabetically arranged.
	- An Account of Sheep.
	- An Account of Samar, one of the Philippines, or Bisayan Isles…
	- Defects in the Laws of Great Britain.
	- On Poetical Genius.
	- Description of a Machine for Untwisting Yarn.
	- Proceedings of the National Assembly of France.
	- An Account of Antiquities in Scotland (with a full-page woodcut of "a Druidical temple on hill of Fiddess, Aberdeenshire,… now entirely demolished").
	- On Philosophical Geography (multi-part).
	- Innoculation, with the natural Small Pox compared.
	- A Proposal for Victualling the Navy in warm climates, &c.
	- A Voyage to the Hebrides (multi-part).
	- Essay on Coughs and Colds.
	- Moral Reflections suggested by the Death of Louis XVI, the king of France.
	- Etc., etc.

Published from December 1790 to January 1794, The Bee was founded and largely written by James Anderson (1739-1808), an exemplar of the Scottish Enlightenment: author, scholar, journalist, farmer, agricultural theorist, economist (his Enquiry into the Nature of the Corn Laws had a profound influence on Karl Marx), member of the Edinburgh Philosophical Society, friend of Jeremy Bentham, correspondent of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson (to whom he sent the first six volumes of The Bee "as a testimony of respect"), etc. Anderson tried to  enlist Robert Burns as a contributor to his weekly, but Burns begged off, describing himself as "a miserable, hurried devil, worn to the marrow in the function of holding the noses of poor publicans to the grindstone of Excise."