[Rarebooks] fa: HANNAH MORE - ESTIMATE OF THE RELIGION OF THE FASHIONABLE WORLD - 1791

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, June 5. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/hbatry4

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI


[Hannah More:] An Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World. By One of the Laity. London: Printed for T. Cadell, in the Strand, MDCCXCI [1791]. FIRST EDITION; small 8vo (15.5 cm) in early/period full tree calf tooled in gilt, gilt-lettered morocco spine label; [8], 261, [3] pp.; with the half-title page and terminal leaf of publisher's adverts. ESTC T33517.

The redoubtable Miss More takes the upper orders to task for their lack of religion and for the decline of Christianity in general (chapter vi, for example, is headed: "A stranger, observing the fashionable mode of life, would not take this to be a christian country").The book was popular and went through four editions in the first year alone, but examples of this first edition are rather uncommon: ESTC locates only two in the British Isles and eight in the U.S. Hannah More (1745-1833), poet, playwright, philanthropist, abolitionist and evangelical busybody, was a tireless (and to some, tiresome) moral reformer and one of the most influential women of her time.

Binding with modest rubbing and crazing, light wear to the corners; title-page and last page with some offsetting (browning) to the edges from the original binder's glue, a few light spots, else the contents are unusually clean, bright and crisp, firmly bound in period tree calf. A handsome copy. The front and rear covers bear a gilt-tooled monogram of the letter "B" surmounted by a coronet, the owner no doubt being a member of that fashionable social set which had so disappointed the author.