[Rarebooks] fa: MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE OF JAMES LACKINGTON, BOOK-SELLER - 1795

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

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

http://tinyurl.com/j6efela

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


James Lackington: Memoirs of the Forty-Five First Years of the Life of James Lackington, the present Bookseller, Finsbury-Square, London. Written by Himself. In Forty-Seven Letters to a Friend. With a Triple Dedication. 1. To the Public. 2. To Respectable [and] 3. To Sordid Booksellers. The thirteenth edition. Corrected and much enlarged; interspersed with many original humorous Stories, and droll Anecdotes, to which is also added, an Index. London: Printed for the Author, Moorfields; and sold by all other Booksellers, [ca. 1795]. Small 8vo (19 cm), untrimmed in early/original marbled boards, rebacked with cloth; original printed labels on the front board (remnant) and rear board, modern printed spine label; 352 pp.; with the half-title and engraved portrait frontispiece.

The famously self-aggrandizing, wandering, eccentric, annoying and fascinating rags-to-riches autobiography of bookseller James Lackington, "who a few Years since began business with five pounds [and] now sells One Hundred Thousand Volumes Yearly" from his bookshop, The Temple of the Muses, the largest in London. Of as much interest, perhaps, as the details of the 18th-century book trade are Lackington's extensive observations on Methodists and Methodism, a sect that played a major role in his life: he seems to be always falling in or falling out with the "friends of Mr. Wesley", and his observations are alternately devout or mocking. In a sequel, the Confessions of 1804, he becomes a true believer once and for all and is heartily ashamed of these "evil" Memoirs.

Original boards rubbed and bumped at the corners; toning and light wear to the untrimmed edges of the text block, some offsetting from the frontispiece, occasional light spotting to the leaves, else very clean and sound, firmly bound. Front paste-down with the attractive bookplate of Peter and Anne Stockham, noted booksellers themselves (in Cecil Court and Lichfield, UK), as well as publishers of facsimiles of 19th century children’s books.