[Rarebooks] fa: 1735 Gentleman's Magazine - MERLIN'S PROPHECY, POETRY, PLAYHOUSES, POPERY, &c.

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, September 28. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/ng4g4xr

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.


The Gentleman's Magazine: or, Monthly Intelligencer. Vol. V. For the Year 1735. London: Printed and sold at St. John's Gate, by F. Jefferies in Ludgate-street, [1735]. Twelve monthly issues (Jan.-Dec.), plus the annual supplement, indices, volume title-page and preface, and a special "Extraordinary" supplement. Thick 8vo in early/period boards and vellum spine, the spine with the volume title and year written in an early hand (and misspelled "Maggazine"); iv + 778 + [16] pp.; engraved frontispiece of "Merlin's Cave", in-text tables, woodcut decorations and illustrations (complete).

An early volume of this mighty organ of the Age of Enlightenment, the first and longest-running "magazine" in the modern sense, which began publication in 1731.
Notable and/or curious features include:

	- POETRY by Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Charlotte Brereton, Jane Hughes Brereton, Elizabeth Rowe, John Boyle ("To Mrs. Rowe, on the foregoing lines"), Elizabeth Carter, and others. There is also a special supplementary issue, The Gentleman's Magazine Extraordinary, devoted entirely to "Poems on Life, Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell: Written on Occasion of the Fifty Pounds and other Prizes." Additionally, there are a number of pages devoted to "Prize Epigrams" in verse, including, "On a Gentleman whose Thigh was put out of joint, by a Young Lady whom he attempted to kiss, as he was playing on her Spinnet," etc. (one of these epigrams, "On a short Clergyman," has been carefully torn out by the volume's original owner, perhaps a short clergyman himself).
	- THEATRE: Mrs. [Elizabeth] Cooper Authress and Actress; Her Play of The Fair Libertine characteriz'd; The Man of Taste criticis'd; On the Regulation of the Theatre; Of Mr. Giffard's Playhouse; Qualifications of an Actor; An Actor's Duty in expressing the Passions; The Folly of frequenting Operas; a Defence of Operas; On the Prostitution of the Theatre; etc.
	- Merlin's Prophecy, with an Interpretation; An Account of Merlin and his Cave.
	- Bastardy productive of great Men.
	- Statesmen generally Upstarts; Mamalukes, Janizaries, and some Kings the same.
	- Account of the Calve's-head Club.
	- South Sea Trade, the National Debt, the Sinking Fund, the Bank Contract, freedom of the press, popery, Jacobites, War of the Polish Succession, etc., etc.
	- Plus Debates and Proceedings in Parliament, monthly Prices of Stocks and Goods, Accounts of Theatrical Performances, Registers of Books published, Bills of Mortality, Obituaries, listings of Bankrupts and Promotions; newspaper extracts; and much, much more.
Binding rubbed, bumped and worn at the corners and edges; one leaf with a corner torn away with loss of text; five leaves have come partially loose, resulting in wear and browning to the protruding fore-edges; lacking terminal flyleaf (blank); contents with occasional browning and light spotting. Front paste-down with the engraved armorial bookplate of J. Comyns, Wood [Devon].