[Rarebooks] fa: JUDAH RESTORED: A POEM 1774 - W.H. Roberts - The BISHOP OF ELY'S COPY

[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,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


William Hayward Roberts: Judah Restored: A Poem. In Six Books. By Dr. Roberts, of Eton College. London: Printed for J. Wilkie; T. Payne; W. Frederic, at Bath; J. Woodyer, at Cambridge; and J. Pote, at Eton, 1774. First edition. Two volumes, 8vo (13 cm), in early/period speckled calf with gilt-lettered morocco spine labels; xxii, [2], 113, [1] pp.; [4], 151, [2] pp.; with a half-title page in each volume. ESTC T100149.

Bindings with a bit of wear to the corners and spine heads; contents with a few occasional small, light spots to the leaves, some browning to the half-title pages, else very clean and crisp, firmly bound. Both volumes with the engraved bookplate of James Yorke, Bishop of Ely from 1781-1808 and an avid collector of books and other fine things. He ordered that his library be dispersed on his death, as evidenced by the inscription on the bookplate: SUCCESSORIBUS SUIS in SEDE ELIENSI LEGAVIT PRÆSUL MUNIFICUS HON. IACOBUS YORKE MDCCCVIII (His bequest as successor in the seat of Ely, bishop, generous patron, James Yorke, 1808). Front paste-down of vol. I with the later bookplate of Robert J. Hayhurst, a noted collector of eighteenth-century literature in contemporary bindings.

First (and only) edition of the magnum opus of William Hayward Roberts (d. 1791), longtime denizen of Eton, first as a student, subsequently as an usher, assistant master, fellow, and, finally, provost. Madame d'Arblay (Fanny Burney) described him as "very fat, with a large paunch and gouty legs. He is good-humoured, loquacious, gay, civil, and parading. I am told, nevertheless, he is a poet, and a very good one." "Southey, who numbers Roberts 'with the same respectable class as the author of Leonidas and the Athenaid, mentions Judah Restored as one of the first books he possessed in his boyhood. 'I read it often,' he adds, 'and can still recur to it with satisfaction, and perhaps I owe something to the plain dignity of its style, which is suited to the subject, and everywhere bears the stamp of good sense and erudition.' Robert Aris Willmott (Lives of Sacred Poets, ii. 324, 327) remarks that 'Judah Restored is such a work as might be produced by a scholar familiar with the treasures of antiquity, whose fancy had been formed and regulated by the best models, and whose ear was attuned to the majestic rhythm of our British epic;' but the utmost that can be finally admitted of Roberts's achievement, from a purely literary point of view, is that it was well-intentioned" (DNB).