[Rarebooks] fa: A SECOND TALE OF A TUB 1715 - Satire re. ROBERT HARLEY, JONATHAN SWIFT, DEFOE &c.

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, 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/j43xllv

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


[Sir Thomas Burnet; George Duckett:] A Second Tale of a Tub: or, The History of Robert Powel the Puppet-Show-Man. London: Printed for J. Roberts near the Oxford Arms in Warwick-Lane, 1715. FIRST EDITION; 8vo (19 cm) in period calf, rebacked to style in modern calf with gilt-lettered spine label; [4], 219, [5] pp.; with the frontispiece, imprimatur leaf, and preliminary blank. ESTC N22063.

A wicked satire on Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford, political power-broker and the friend and patron of Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, John Gay, and Daniel Defoe. Burnet and his sometime collaborator Duckett portray Harley as a puppet-master manipulating Swift and other "hack" writers in the service of the Tory faction. The book is prefaced by a satirical dedication to "the E—l of Ox—d" and a second dedication "to the Lady Majority." While not a novel, per se, the work is considered one of the earliest English examples of collaborative fiction. Affixed to the verso of the imprimatur leaf is an old catalog clipping which reads: "The author of this literary curiosity was T. Burnet, son of the Bishop, who endeavoured after to suppress it, purchasing all the copies he could at great expense."

The binding, neatly rebacked, shows old scuffing and abrasions to the boards; contents with some cockling and toning to the leaves, soiling to the last page, occasional spots and touches of soiling elsewhere, paper repair to upper corner of title-page, otherwise quite clean and sound, firmly bound. From the library of noted book collector Hugh Selbourne,  with his discreet ownership stamp on the verso of the title-page.