[Rarebooks] fa: EARL OF CHESTERFIELD: LETTERS TO HIS SON • First Edition/First Issue • 1774

[ArCh]

Auction ends Sunday, October 29. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

https://tinyurl.com/ymdoqaee

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


Lord Chesterfield: Letters Written by the late Right Honourable Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th 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. Published by Mrs. Eugenia Stanhope, from the originals now in her possession. In two volumes. London: Printed  for J. Dodsley in Pall-Mall, MDCCLXXIV [1774]. First edition, first issue. Two volumes, 4to (29.5 cm), in early/period full polished calf, rebacked preserving the original gilt-tooled spines, gilt-lettered morocco spine labels; [4], vii, [1], 568 pp.; [4], 606, [2] pp; with the half-titles in both volumes, errata leaf in vol. II, portrait frontispiece in vol. I. ESTC T136181.

The uncommon first issue of the first edition, with the typo "quia uroit" for "qui auroit" on p. 55, line 16. Bindings with some rubbing and edge wear, corners bumped; contents with generally mild browning and offsetting (heavier on a few leaves in vol. II), scattered foxing, a few occasional small stains and/or touches of soiling, small ink stain to the fore-edge of the text block of vol. II; else clean and sound, securely bound in handsome calf bindings of the period. Front paste-downs with the modern bookplate of antiquarian bookseller Peter Stewart Young, Tillingham.

An attractive example of this phenomenally successful collection of Lord Chesterfield's letters to his illegitimate son, published posthumously by his son's widow. Begun when his son was only five and continuing for over thirty years until the latter's death in 1768, the correspondence became the eighteenth-century handbook on the "Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman," often reprinted and widely emulated. On the other hand, Samuel Johnson condemned Chesterfield's letters for teaching "the morals of a whore and the manners of a dancing-master."