[Rarebooks] fa: THINKS-I-TO-MYSELF: A SERIO-LUDICRO TALE 1812 - Edward Nares - Original Printed Boards

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, April 22. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/yabuzvzd

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


[Edward Nares:] Thinks-I-To-Myself. A Serio-Ludicro, Tragico-Comic Tale, Written by Thinks-I-To-Myself Who? Two volumes in one. Boston: Published by Bradford & Read, and by A. Finley, Philadelphia, 1812. Second American edition (same year as the first); 8vo (18.5 cm), untrimmed, in the original publisher’s printed boards, rebacked to style, printed spine label; 215 pp. Now housed in a mylar dustjacket.

Two volumes bound in one. An eccentric, occasionally Tristram Shandy-esque satire written by Edward Nares (1762-1841), regius professor of modern history at Oxford who, in his younger days, had caused a scandal by eloping with the third daughter of the Duke of Marlborough (Nares had been librarian at Blenheim Palace at the time). Contemporary reviews were decidedly mixed, the Monthly Review describing it as a “truly comic performance [with] much good-humoured satire,” while the Critical Review harrumphed: “can any thing show the frivolous, not to say depraved taste of the times so much as this kind of writing?” For what it’s worth, we read it ourselves some time ago and, while we can’t recall many of the details, we judged it “quite charming; volume I delightful, volume II less so.”

Boards with fairly modest rubbing, small stain to the upper corner of the front board; contents toned with some spotting throughout, as usual with American books of this period, occasional damp-stains, one leaf torn but intact, corners of the text block a bit bumped, else generally quite clean and sound, firmly bound.