[Rarebooks] fa: MEMOIRS OF AGRICULTURE & OTHER OECONOMICAL ARTS 1768-82 - Robert Dossie 3 vols.

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, March 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/z3hq52g

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


Robert Dossie: Memoirs of Agriculture, and other Oeconomical Arts. London: Printed for J. Nourse, Bookseller to His Majesty, 1768, 1771, 1782. FIRST EDITION. Three volumes (complete), tall 8vo (ca. 22.5 cm), untrimmed in original/early boards; xxvii, [4], 455, [17] pp.; xx, 482, [8] pp.; xxi, [9], 462, [18] pp; with the half-titles, advertisement leaf at the end of vol. III, woodcut illus., engraved folding plates. ESTC T144854.

Uncommon as a complete set: the volumes were issued separately several years apart. As explained in the notice on the verso of the half-titles, "The Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, will occasionally publish in this Work, such Pieces as they shall think proper to lay before the Public." The third volume appeared a full eleven years after the second, which might explain why it's a bit taller than its predecessors. Vol. III with rough boards and lacking its backstrip, binding tender but holding; the other vols. with rubbing and wear, vol. II with splitting to the paper along the joints; the contents of all three vols. generally Very Good or better: some toning and modest wear to the untrimmed edges, repaired tear to one leaf, a few occasional small spots and touches of light soiling, else clean, bright and fresh, securely bound. Early engraved armorial bookplates of Thomas Hall, Esq., and with his signature to the title-page of vol. II.

An extensive collection of essays on agriculture, chemistry, pharmacology, geology, engineering, etc., written or collected by Robert Dossie (1717-1777), a London-based apothecary and polymath, and a co-founder of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce. "The most important performance of his later years was the periodic issue of the chief papers submitted to the Society which, together with several new articles of his own, he published under the title of Memoirs of Agriculture, and other Oeconomical Arts (Gibbs: "Robert Dossie and the Society of Arts," Annals of Science, volume 7, 1951).