Scribleriana Transferred, 2013–2014

• • C. R. Johnson offers for about $7605 the first edition of The Enjoyment, 4-p. folio, long attributed to John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (as old Wing R1742) but more recently to John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, later Duke of Buckingham (as Wing B5336A and ESTC R35148). Johnson reviews the evidence for both attributions and seems to favor Rochester’s authorship. Of two issues that differ in the colophons on the fourth page, this has the reading “London, Printed in the Year, 1679,” as the Harvard copy on EEBO, linked to Wing R1742 [now B5336A]. The Newberry’s copy of the other issue, with “To be Sold at the Judges Head in Chancery-Lane, near Fleetstreet,” is also on EEBO, linked to Wing B5336B and ESTC R230166. The ESTC locates five copies of the former and three of the latter issues.

• • Jeremy Norman of Novarto, CA, has listed John Evelyn’s Sculptura: or The History, and Art of Chalcography and Engraving in Copper. . . . To which is annexed a new manner of engraving, or mezzo tinto, communicated by his Highness Prince Rupert to the Author of this Treatise (by J[ames]. C[ottrell]. for G. Beedle and T. Collins, . . . and J. Crook, . . . 1662), 8vo: pp. [32] 148, [4, advts.]; plus an engraved title (a seated woman holding the placard “History of Chalcography by J. E.”) designed by Evelyn and engraved by A. Hertochs (“JE inv AH scu”); and on p. 121 “folding mezzotint by Prince Rupert”; 168 × 106 mm.; rebacked cont. paneled calf gilt; once owned by painter Charles Fairfax Murray (d. 1919); duplicate stamp of Library of Congress on A2; apparently last owned by Leonard B. Schlosser, who acquired it at or after its sale at Sotheby’s New York, 18 June 1992, lot 456 ($16,500). This book contains the first printing of a mezzotint in England (folded, depicting the head of the executioner of St. John the Baptist), plus an explanation of the technique (R351; Wing E3513). Norman notes that Evelyn’s diary records hearing of the technique from Rupert on February 24 and then receiving a demonstration by the Prince on March 13, 1661. Evelyn in Sculptura credits Rupert with the process, but later in Numismata (1697) notes that the process had been developed in the 1640s by Ludwig von Siegen. Sculptura will not be printed again until 1744 when it appears “Containing some corrections and additions taken from the margin of the author’s printed copy,” and with a memoir of Evelyn’s life (J. Payne, 1755).

• • Richard M. Ford, among many manuscripts, offers a late 19th-century transcription of John Evelyn’s unpublished “Testamentum in Procinctu,” dated toward its close “10th. Aug. 1692” ($1645, AbeBooks). The original manuscript is in the British Library (Add MS 78453), described in its catalogue as “Advice by John Evelyn the diarist to his son as he was about to set out for Ireland.” Ford here offers a transcript with provenance notations preceding the text in pencil, suggesting “c. 1880” for composition and “by W. J. Evelyn (?),” whom Ford identifies as William John Evelyn (1822–1908), of Sayles Court. The MS is within a notebook bound in half-calf with marbled boards; it has 85 leaves of foolscap octavo (with a Stowford Mills watermark dated 1874).

• • Among unrecorded offerings involving bibliographical discoveries, Maggs Bros. lists Alexander Rennemann’s Dutch Fortune-Teller, Discovering XXXVI several Questions which Old and Young, Married-Men . . . Delight to be Resolved of. Brought into England by John Booker. (“London, Printed by A.P. for F. Coles, T. Vere, J. Wright, and J. Clarke, and are to be sold at their several Shops, MDCLXXVII”), folio, 22 leaves, with only two of five double-page plates likely to have been present; not in ESTC or Wing ($3718, AbeBooks). The title-page reproduced by Maggs apparently has the same large engraved woodcut of a fortune-teller as does the 1650 first edition, ESTC R4214 (calling for [44] pp. + ten leaves of plates), Wing B3725, on EEBO (sole copy at the BL).

• • G. W. Stuart of Yuma, AZ, lists an unrecorded edition of Poems and Translations. By John Oldham (“Printed...