[Rarebooks] fa: [IRELAND] SIR JONAH BARRINGTON: PERSONAL SKETCHES OF HIS OWN TIMES 1827-32

[ArCh]

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Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


Sir Jonah Barrington: Personal Sketches of His Own Times. London: Henry Colburn [and Richard Bentley], 1827-32. First editions. Three volumes, 8vo (22 cm), in early/period half calf and marbled boards, gilt-lettered morocco spine labels, marbled endpapers; portrait frontispiece, publisher's adverts bound at the rear of vol. II.

Complete with the third volume issued separately five years after the first two. Amusing memoirs and sketches of eighteenth-century Irish life by Jonah Barrington (1760?-1834), an eccentric and profligate Irish jurist who has the distinction of being the only judge in the United Kingdom ever to be removed from office by petition of both houses of parliament under the Act of Settlement. Barrington at least deserves credit for being candid in his memoirs: "The surroundings of his childhood, as he describes them, would, in their mixture of extravagance and discomfort, have done no discredit to Castle Rackrent... He confesses, without any appearance of shame, that having been at first intended for the army he received an offer of an ensign's commission from General Hunt Walsh; but having ascertained that the regiment was likely to be ordered into immediate service in America, he declined the offer, requesting the general to bestow the favour upon 'some hardier soldier'... His extravagant habits had brought him considerably into debt. He himself humorously describes some of the more harmless shifts to which he was reduced to extricate himself from his difficulties. In 1805 he went so far as to appropriate some of the money which had been paid into his court; and he committed the same offence on at least two other occasions, in 1806 and 1810. These peculations were brought to light by a commission of inquiry into the Irish courts of justice in 1830; and in the same year Sir Jonah was, upon petition of both houses of parliament, deprived of his office. He thereupon left England, and never again returned" (DNB).

Bindings with modest rubbing and wear, some joints cracked, with the front joint of vol. II a little tender, but all the boards are secure; occasional light spotting to the leaves, a few pencil marks by a previous owner, otherwise very clean and fresh. Front paste-down with the engraved armorial bookplate of Sir William Eden, Bt.