[Rarebooks] fa: JOHN MILTON: A DEFENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND - First Edition 1692

[ArCh]

Auctions ending Sunday, March 19. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

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Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


John Milton: A Defence of the People of England, by John Milton: in Answer to Salmasius's Defence of the King. [London or Amsterdam? : s.n.] Printed in the Year 1692. First edition. Small 8vo (17 cm) in full modern vellum with titles in gilt to the front cover, housed in a (very snug) vellum-coverered slipcase; [6], xxii, 246, [2] pp.; bound without the initial blank leaf, but with the terminal "advertisement to the reader" leaf present. ESTC R9447; Pforzheimer 726; Wing M2104.

The first edition in English of Milton's Pro populo Anglicano defensio (1652). Written in response to Claude Saumaise's Defensio regia pro Carolo I, the work was a passionate defense of republicanism, parliament, and Oliver Cromwell, as well as a vituperative and surprisingly personal attack on Saumaise himself. With the English monarchy firmly re-established by the time this edition was published, the anonymous publisher has prudently (if somewhat disingenuously) added an advertisement leaf professing his urgent wish "not to contribute to the throwing any dirt upon the Memory of so Great a Prince, and Glorious a Martyr, as the late King Charles the First."

Light general toning to the text, browning and some chipping to the edges of the title-page and the last few leaves, otherwise clean and sound, very firmly bound.