[Rarebooks] fa: LETTERS WRITTEN BY THE EARL OF CHESTERFIELD TO HIS SON - 4 vols. 1774

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, November 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/3t6zaky8

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


Philip Dormer Stanhope; Eugenia Stanhope (ed.): Letters Written by the late Right Honourable Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, to His Son, Philip Stanhope, Esq; Late Envoy Extraordinary at the Court of Dresden: together with Several Other Pieces on Various Subjects. London: Printed by J. Dodsley in Pall Mall, MDCCLXXIV [1774]. Third edition (printed the same year as the first). Four volumes, 8vo (22 cm), in early/period full polished calf, spines tooled and lettered in gilt; with the half-title pages, engraved frontispiece portrait. ESTC T143974; Gulick 6.

Bindings with light edge-wear, a few scattered stains, some creasing and rubbing to the spines, one joint cracked but secure; offsetting/browning to the frontispiece and title-page, contents toned with a few occasional small spots and touches of soiling, else clean and sound, firmly bound. Early booklabel of C. J. C. Prescott of Wilmslow Park; later pencil signatures of Caroline D. Phillips, dated "Sept. 1923, Highover" (the country house built by her and her husband, the diplomat William Phillips, in North Beverly, Mass.).

A handsome early printing of Chesterfield's witty, elegant, instructive letters to his son. Though never intended for appearance in print, they were published by the earl's widow in 1774 and immediately became the definitive how-to guide for every would-be man of the world. Samuel Johnson famously criticized them for teaching "the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing-master."