[Rarebooks] fa: RICHARD BLACKMORE - PRINCE ARTHUR and KING ARTHUR - 2 Works in 1 - 1697

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, November 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/yxksmqxl

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


Richard Blackmore: [Prince Arthur. An Heroick Poem. In Ten Books...To which is added, an Index, explaining the Names of Countries, Cities, and Rivers, &c. London: Printed for Awnsham and John Churchil at the Black Swan in Pater-Noster-Row, 1695-6?] [BOUND WITH:] King Arthur. An Heroick Poem. In Twelve Books... To which is Annexed, an Index, Explaining the Names of Countrys, Citys, and Rivers, &c. London: Printed for Awnsham and John Churchil at the Black Swan in Pater-Noster-Row, and Jacob Tonson at the Judges Head near the Inner-Temple-gate in Fleet-street, MDCXCVII [1697]. Two works bound in one volume, folio (31.5 cm) in early/period calf, gilt-lettered spine label; [18], 296, iv pp.; [2], xvii, [1], 343, [7] pp. Wing B3077; ESTC R18780 (for the second title).

First work lacking the title-page, second work lacking the last leaf of the index. First edition of King Arthur; second or third edition of Prince Arthur, matching the pagination (subsequent to the title-page) of both editions in ESTC; additionally, it matches the signature collation of the third edition; no signatures for the second edition are provided in the ESTC listing. Binding worn and rubbed, front board detached; dampstaining to the first three leaves, intermittent light dampstains elsewhere at the margins; first leaf with vertical tear at the bottom margin; occasional light toning and spotting to the contents, a few tidy ink annotations and corrections in an early hand, otherwise quite clean and sound. Ownership signature of David Davies ("his Book 1762") to the foot of the first preface leaf, suggesting that the title-page may have been missing even then. Another, probably earlier, owner has branded his initials (TO) on the edges of the text block.

Richard Blackmore (1650?-1729), physician in ordinary to William III and later, Queen Anne, was also, in his "scant leisure," an astonishingly prolific churner-outer of poetry, essays, tracts and treatises. While his literary admirers included such men as Samuel Johnson and John Locke, others mocked his moralistic "epics" as verbose, ponderous and "insipid." Dryden satirized him in The Dunciad, Jonathan Swift sarcastically dubbed him "England's Arch-Poet," and Samuel Garth, in his Dispensary, urged him to "learn to rise in sense and sink in sound."