Dibdin

1829 · rif. BIBLIO-59777 — Robert Jennings and John Major London second edition 1829. 3 vols later buckram with leather spine-labels 8vo 22 cm. xlii 421 1 iv 428 iv 481 1 pp ills plates. Dibdin's 'most readable book' according to Lister and Southey had welcomed the first edition as "one of the most beautiful and covetable books of modern times". It charts in wonderful detail his six and a -half months tour buying -or where unavailable admiring - book treasures in France and Germany. Dibdin is at his most exuberant - abroad for the first time in his life - and recounting his adventures with great spirit and a degree of self-congratulation : his complicated exhange negotiations which secured for Earl Spencer the 'Stuttgart Virgils' from le Brett the Royal Librarian and the King of Wurtemburg were described in a letter to Spencer as 'one of the most difficult cautiously and delicately-conducted negotiations in the annals of bibliographical diplomacy'.and Dibdin does not stint the reader in his account. Of this second edition he wrote in his Reminiscences: "A second edition - not divested of ornaments but contrariwise possessing some which do not appertain to its precursor. possessing in the running notes critical replies and biographical memoranda advantages which in these respects give it a superiority over the first."-Dibdin's Reminiscences v. 2 p. 696. Windle & Pippin A38b. A presentation set and subsequently owned by one of Dibdin's bibliographers. Volume 1 has an inscription in Dibdin's hand but unsigned on the verso of the front free endpaper: "The Reverend Bryant Burgess with the Author's sincere Regards"; it is signed on the recto of the front free endpaper by Bryant Burgess in ink and underneath by W. Sidney Scott in pencil. Bryant Burgess 1778-1846 a graduate of Exeter College Oxford was a curate at St. Marylebone and later Rector of St Benet Gracechurch and St Leonard Eastcheap. He is listed as a subscriber to Dibdin's Sermons 1825 and was described by Isaac N. Arnold as "an amateur artist of considerable merit a fine scholar and a very agreeable gentleman". Walter Sidney Scott 1900-1980 an author was the owner of an impressive Dibdin collection and spent considerable time working on a bibliographical catalogue of Dibdin's works "A Dibdin Library" 1962 which was never published – he briefly mentions these volumes his second edition of Dibdin's "France and Germany" in that catalogue noting the binding as by Forbes. Generally a Good set soundly bound with some offsetting from the plates occasional foxing spots to the text and some browning and foxing to the plates tissue-guards where present and endpapers; volume 1 has staining to the frontispiece and volume 3 has staining to the lower fore-edge corners; there is a small piece of paper adhered to the contents page in volume 3. Robert Jennings and John Major, London, second edition, 1829 hardcover