[Rarebooks] fa: JOHN HAWKESWORTH - THE ADVENTURES OF TELEMACHUS 1768

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, November 3. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/yyx233jp

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fenelon; John Hawkesworth: The Adventures of Telemachus, the Son of Ulysses. London: Printed for the Author, by W. and W. Strahan, MDCCLXVIII [1768]. First edition thus; 4to (29 cm) in original/period polished calf nicely rebacked to style in modern calf with the original morocco spine label laid down, marbled endpapers; xxxv + [1] + 462 pp.; a list of subscribers, 48 engraved vignettes. ESTC T144205.

SUBSCRIBER'S COPY: with the engraved armorial bookplate of Ynyr Burges, whose name also appears in the subscribers list. Binding with very modest wear to the edges and a few faint abrasions; contents with light toning and offsetting from the engravings, else very clean and sound, firmly bound. A handsome copy.

Other subscribers include: Benjamin Franklin, Esq. L.L.D. of Philadelphia; William Franklin, Esq. [Benjamin's illegitimate son], Governor of New Jersey; the Earl of Chesterfield; William Pitt the Elder (the Earl of Chatham); the actor David Garrick; the playwright George Colman; the diplomat Sir George Macartney, Britain's first envoy to China; Henry Thrale; Samuel Whitbread; Fulke Greville; and His Excellency the Prince of Masserano, Ambassador from the Court of Spain.

First edition of the Hawkesworth translation of Fenelon's perennially popular prose epic, a totemic work of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Hawkesworth's interpretation was popular in itself, going through numerous printings before 1800. John Hawkesworth (1715?-1773) was a writer and editor who founded The Adventurer with Samuel Johnson and later edited and published the Works as well as the Letters of Jonathan Swift. A playwright of some note, he also produced Account of Voyages in the Southern Hemisphere (1773), which received such a critical lambasting on grounds of inaccuracy and immorality that it hastened him to his grave, purportedly by opium poisoning.