[Rarebooks] fa: WILLIAM GODWIN - THE ENQUIRER 1797 - On Education, Manners and Literature

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, May 15. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/j635f58

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


William Godwin: The Enquirer. Reflections on Education, Manners, and Literature. In a Series of Essays. London: Printed for G. G. and J. Robinson, Paternoster-Row, MDCCXCVII  [1797]. FIRST EDITION. Tall 8vo (22 cm) in nineteenth-century half morocco and marbled boards; xii, 481, [3] pp.; with the half-title page and final errata leaf. ESTC T94276; Goldsmiths 16911; Kress B3397.

Binding with some scuffing to the leather, wear and darkening to the spine; leaves with a few light (erasable) pencil marks in the margins, light toning and a solitary spot of foxing to the half-title and title pages, else about Fine: very clean, tight and fresh. Front free-endpaper with the ownership stamp of J.W. van Woensel Kooy.

First edition of this groundbreaking and influential collection of essays and musings by William Godwin (1756-1836), one of the great  intellectual boogiemen of his age, radical freethinker, atheist, anarchist, philosopher, economist, novelist, essayist, biographer, proponent of free-love, husband of Mary Wollstonecraft and father of Mary Shelley. Essays include: Of an Early Taste for Reading; Of Public and Private Education; Of Cohabitation; Of Riches and Poverty; Of Beggars; Of Servants; Of Politeness; Of Learning; Of English Style; etc., etc. Much of the first part of the book, on education and child-rearing, arose from discussions between Godwin and Wollstonecraft, and the collection as a whole had a powerful influence on Thomas Malthus and other thinkers of the age.