[Rarebooks] fa: RICHARD CUMBERLAND - THE OBSERVER - 5 vols. in Period Tree Calf 1786-1791

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, October 25. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

https://tinyurl.com/y6juu7vd

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


[Richard Cumberland:] The Observer: being a Collection of Moral, Literary and Familiar Essays. London: Printed for C. Dilly In the Poultry, 1786-91. First editions of vols. I-IV, second edition of vol. V. Five volumes (complete), 8vo (19.5 cm), in early/period full tree calf, gilt-lettered spine labels. ESTC T116942. Bindings with modest wear to the edges, extremities and joints; contents with some offsetting and spotting to the first and last few leaves, occasional toning and scattered spotting elsewhere, otherwise clean and sound, securely and appealingly bound. Front paste-downs with the impressive early (original?) armorial bookplates of George de Ligné Gregory (1740-1820); vol. I with modern bookplate of Robert J. Hayhurst, a noted collector of eighteenth-century literature in contemporary bindings.

Richard Cumberland (1732-1811), whose day job was as a civil servant in the Board of Trade and Plantations, was a prolific essayist, poet and playwright estimated to have written more than fifty plays. He was well-known in the literary circles of the day and met regularly at the British Coffeehouse with the likes of Samuel Foote, David Garrick and Oliver Goldsmith. Notoriously self-important and thin-skinned, he was immortalized by Sheridan as the character Sir Fretful Plagiary in The Critic. In these ca. 150 essays, Cumberland tackles such diverse subjects as Homer's Iliad, Samuel Richardson, Shakespeare, dueling, puffing, gaming, divorce, incest, Judaism, the French Revolution, the "present taste for acting private plays," etc., etc.