[Rarebooks] fa: Mandeville's FABLE OF THE BEES 1729-32 - 2 vols. in Nice Calf Bindings

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, March 8. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/jw3ydoq

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

[Bernard de Mandeville:] The Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits. With an Essay on Charity and Charity-schools. And a Search into the Nature of Society. The sixth edition. To which is added, a Vindication of the Book from the Aspersions contain'd in a Presentment of the Grand-Jury of Middlesex, and an abusive Letter to Lord C. London: Printed for J. Tonson, 1732. [WITH] The Fable of the Bees. Part II. By the Author of the First. London: Printed and Sold by J. Roberts in Warwick-Lane, 1729. Two volumes, 8vo, uniformly bound in full polished calf by Cecil & Larkins, gilt-tooled spines and morocco spine labels, marbled endpapers; [16], 477, [1] pp.; [2], xxxi,[ 1], 432, [24] pp.; with woodcut decorations and initials. ESTC N8073; T78343.

Modest rubbing and edge-wear to the bindings, joints professionally repaired; contents mildly toned with some scattered light foxing; occasional penciled (erasable) tick marks in the margins; occasional offsetting to the text in vol. II; else clean and sound. A handsome set. With the fine engraved bookplates of Henry North Grant Bushby (engraved by "C. W. [Charles William] Sherborn, R.E. 1908") and Marjorie & Martin Mitau (depicting bookstalls on the banks of the Seine, signed in pencil in the margin, presumably by the artist/engraver.)

Mandeville's cynical and controversial classic, in some ways a precursor of Adam Smith and laissez-faire economics, in which he argues that virtue derives from the practice of selfish instincts, that seemingly  base behavior produces positive economic effects, and that in fact public prosperity is dependent upon private vices. Denounced by many as immoral when it first appeared, the work remained popular and influential throughout the eighteenth century and is still admired for "the real acuteness of the writer as well as the vigour of its style" (DNB).