[Rarebooks] fa: JOHN GAY - THE BEGGAR’S OPERA (and) POLLY - Complete w/ MUSICAL SCORES - 1729

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, March 7. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

https://tinyurl.com/y7vp8rhy

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


John Gay: The Beggar's Opera. As it is Acted at the Theatre-Royal in Lincolns-Inn Fields. Written by Mr. Gay. The third edition: with the Ouverture in Score, the Songs, and the Basses, (the Ouverture and B]asses Compos'd by Dr. Pepusch) Curiously Engrav'd on Copper Plates. London: Printed for John Watts, at the Printing-Office in Wildcourt, near Lincoln's-Inn Fields, MDCCXXIX [1729]. [8] + 60pp., plus 46 plates of engraved musical notation (complete). ESTC T13773. [BOUND WITH:] Polly: An Opera. Being the Second Part of the Beggar's Opera. Written by Mr. Gay. London: Printed for the Author, MDCCXXIX [1729]. [2], vii, [1], 72 pp., plus 31 plates of engraved musical notation (complete). First edition. ESTC T13800.

Two works bound in one volume; 4to (24 cm), early/period mottled calf, rebacked in modern calf with gilt-lettered spine titles, later endpapers. Binding rubbed, corners professionally repaired; front paste-down and free-endpaper with the bookplates of Shadworth H. Hodgson and the Hodgson Bequest to Rugby School Library, and two inkstamps of the Temple Reading Room (no other library marks); light foxing to the first few leaves and occasionally to the page edges, a few stray, small spots, otherwise very clean and sound, firmly bound.

An early printing of Gay's Beggar's Opera, one of the foundational texts of Western musical theatre, together with a first edition of its scarcer and less well known sequel, both complete with their "curiously engrav'd" musical scores. In his introduction to the second work, Gay describes in detail how Polly was set to begin rehearsals when it was peremptorily suppressed by the Lord Chamberlain. Gay was informed that "I have been charg'd with writing immoralities, that it [Polly] is filled with calumnies and slander against particular great persons, and that Majesty it-self is endeavour'd to be brought into ridicule and contempt... To justify and vindicate my own character, I thought my-self obliged to print the Opera without delay in the manner I have done."