[Rarebooks] fa: DANIEL DEFOE - TRUE COLLECTION of the WRITINGS of THE TRUE BORN ENGLISH-MAN 1703

[ardchamber at earthlink.net]

Listed now, auction ending May 22. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/jh7mkjr

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA

[Daniel Defoe:] A true Collection of the Writings of the Author of The True Born English-man. Corrected by himself. London: Printed, and are to be Sold by most Booksellers in London and Westminster, 1703. FIRST EDITION. Thick 8vo (19.5 cm) in period/original paneled calf with a modern gilt-lettered morocco spine label; [24], 465, [1] pp. ESTC T71953; Moore 58; Kress 2380.
The first authorized edition of this collection of Defoe's writings, not to be confused with a piracy issued the same year with the nearly identical title, A Collection of the Writings [etc.] (tellingly, lacking the word "true"). Defoe addresses this "pretended Collection" in a note on the verso of the title-page, asserting that his authorized edition "has been corrected, and contains above double the number of Tracts that were printed in the said sham Collection…"

The unsophisticated (very) period binding is well worn, with losses to the leather at the corners and along the rear joint; inner hinges cracked with the binding shaken and fragile, but still holding; front free-endpaper is detached and the frontispiece has gone missing; the contents toned with intermittent damp-stain (most noticeable in the first part of the text), scattered spotting soiling and staining. From the library of noted book collector Hugh Selbourne, with his discreet ownership stamp on the verso of the title-page and in the bottom margin of one text leaf. The front endpaper bears multiple signatures of the book's original owner, a contemporary of Defoe's, Henry Aglionby de Nunnery, dated 1707, along with some lines from "The Thief" by Abraham Cowley written in the same hand: "Thou rob'st my days of business and delight / Of Sleep thou rob'st my Night / O Lovely Theif! What wilt thou doe? / What Robb me of Heaven too…[etc.]." Clearly, a man in love. Aglionby's signatures also appear on the front and rear paste-downs. This is presumably Henry Aglionby, esq., of Nunnery (1684-1759), sheriff of Cumberland and MP for Carlisle in the reign of George I.