Amour

1817 · 250494 — London: For T. Hookham Jun. and Co. Old Bond Street; and Baldwin Cradock and Joy Paternoster Row 1817. First edition. Half titles present D6 in vol. I a cancel. 3 vols. 12mo. Dark blue green textured cloth over boards printed paper spine labels minor chipping bottom edge slightly trimmed others uncut. Fine. First edition. Half titles present D6 in vol. I a cancel. 3 vols. 12mo. Rare Peacock Satire in Early Cloth Binding. "ANTHELIA MELINCOURT at the age of twenty-one was mistress of herself and of ten thousand a year and of a very ancient and venerable castle in one of the wildest valleys in Westmoreland." <br/>The opening line of Melincourt is indisputably a rejoinder to Austen's celebrated gambit in Pride and Prejudice 1813 and Peacock's sharpest satire of wealth fortune-hunting and politics recounts the fortunes of the heiress and her social climbing friends as well as the bon-vivant Sir Telegraph Paxarent his philosophical friend Mr. Forester and the career of Sir Oran Haut-ton - a "specimen of the natural and original man" and an orang-utan of high fashion "heightened by a pair of enormous whiskers and the folds of a vast cravat" - who is elected as one of the MPs for the venerable rotten borough of Onevote.<br/>A rare work that is almost invariably seen in worn half leather bindings the present copy of Melincourt is in a nicely preserved near contemporary binding of dark green cloth with printed spine labels the publication date is too early by a few years for this to to be publisher's cloth a very handsome triple-decker with good provenance. A note from Esther Potter to Marilyn Butler quotes Victor Schulderer of the British Museum who called Meyerstein 1889-1952 a "poet novelist and musician outstandingly gifted and eccentric". Sadleir 1957e; not in Wolff; Garside & Schöwerling 1817:46. Provenance: English scholar and collector E.H.W. Meyerstein his monogram and date of acquisition 1944 "from J.R.T. E-" ; bookseller and bibliographer Graham Pollard 1903-1976; given to Marilyn Butler wife of his nephew David author of Peacock Displayed 1976 For T. Hookham Jun. and Co. Old Bond Street; and Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, Paternoster Row unknown books