[Rarebooks] fa: THOMAS FULLER - HISTORY OF THE WORTHIES OF ENGLAND 1662 - Folio/Paneled Calf

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, September 10. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/ybfh4kjp

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA

Thomas Fuller: The History of the Worthies of England. London: Printed by J. G. W. L. and W. G. [John Grismond, William Leybourne and William Godbid], MDCLXII [1662]. First edition. Folio (33 cm) in early paneled calf, rebacked in modern calf with gilt-lettered spine label; [6], 30, 33-70, 73-144, 149-300, 317-368, 16, 13-100, 105-144, 149-258, 257 [i.e. 261]-354, 232, [4], 60 pp. (erratic pagination, as issued, but the text is continuous); woodcut decorations and initials. ESTC R37357; Wing F2440; Pforzheimer 391.

Bound without the portrait frontispiece and preliminary blank; binding with some scuffs and edge-wear, bumping to the corners; contents toned with occasional browning and spotting, a few leaves with light worming to the fore-edge margins, not affecting the text; early owner's small ink signature to dedication leaf. Holograph addendum slip, probably 18th-century, bound in at Ttt (Nottingham-shire) re. William Lee, inventor of "Engines, or steel=looms" for the weaving of "Silk stockings, Waistcoats, &c."

First edition of this monumental county-by-county survey not only of eminent personages, but also of buildings, manufactures, scenic wonders (e.g., of Cumberland: "Although, if the word, Wonders, be strained up high and hard, this County affordeth none, yet if the sense thereof be somewhat let down, the compass thereof fetcheth in the Moss-Troopers…"), local history, saints, martyrs, and proverbs, etc., etc. Published a year after his death, the Worthies is the best known and most important work of the prolific historian Thomas Fuller (1608-1661), purportedly one of the first English writers to make his living entirely by his pen (i.e., patronage).