Scribleriana Transferred, 2015–2016, Part II

• • One of the most interesting of many financial and military documents of note offered by Richard M. Ford of London is "The Gross and Net Produce of all the Branches of Revenue under the Commissioners of his Majesty's Customs in England. Together with an Adjustment of the Net Produce…," a book of more than 130 red-lined pages with the first sixty-five pages containing custom records for revenue from imposts on products including French wines, tobacco, coffee, spices, etc., covering 1679 to 1735. The boxed manuscript, missing some text, was sold at auction by Worcester Public Library (it has its reference library stamp on at least six pages) at Dominic Winter's and is now listed by Ford on AbeBooks (c. $5,068), noting two comparable sets of records in libraries but none published. The first two lists are "Yearly Payments into the Receipt of Exchequer on all the Several Branches of the Customs from Michaelmas 1679 to Christmas 1710" and "Payments into the Exchequer for prohibited uncustomed and forfeited goods Annually from Christmas 1701."

• • Forest Books in England sold to the University of Pennsylvania an unrecorded edition of Conjugal Love and Duty: A Discourse upon Hebrews xiii.4. Preached at St. Ann's September 11, 1757 by John Brett, D.D., Rector of Moynalty in the Diocese of Meath and of Fercullen in the Diocese of Kildare (no place: Printed in the Year MDCCLVIII), 8vo: pp. xxiv, 22; with half-title; disbound. ESTC has six London and three Dublin editions for 1757–1758 but not this one.

• • Sam Gatteno Books (Michigan) lists on AbeBooks an unrecorded edition of Elizabeth Rowe's Devout Exercises of the Heart, in Meditation and Soliloquy, Prayer and Praise ("Printed by B. Tooke in Fleet-Street, 1762"), 8vo, pp. 175; in cont. sheep ($600). This false imprint is shared by another edition of the same work, a 12mo dated 1756, owned only by Bryn Mawr College (N479424), and also a 1760 12mo edition of Rowe's Friendship in Death (N31805), owned by two libraries. None of the three listings indicates that these are false imprints, but both Benjamin Tooke I and II had been dead for over thirty years. These piracies might have originated outside London, where Rowe's classics were frequently printed.

• • James Hawkes (London) offers on AbeBooks an unrecorded supplemental volume to Captain Alexander Smith's two-volume 1714 editions of The History of the Lives of the Most Notorious Highway-Men (J. Morphew and A. Dodd): The Third and Last Volume of the History of the Lives and Robberies of the Most Noted Highway-Men, Foot-Pads, House-Breakers, Shop-Lifts, and Other Thieves and Murderers of both Sexes, in and about London, and other Places of Great Britain, for above 50 Years … (Morphew & Dodd), 12mo, pp. xxiv, 287, [1]; in nineteenth-century calf, rebacked, marble endpapers preserved, bookplate of Fountaine Walker. Hawkes notes that the contents are largely included in volume 2 of the 1719 fifth ed., A Compleat History of the Lives and Robberies (for S. Briscoe and sold by A. Dodd), pp. 1–284, line 5, and most of 284–286 being found on pp. 109–319 and 363–364 of 1719.

• • Quaritch's summer 2016 catalogue of English Books & Manuscripts includes an autograph letter from Frances Sheridan to Samuel Richardson, dated "Monday June 21st" at the foot, with the year "1756" added later by another in dating at the top where "Mrs S-n to R." is also added, 1-1/2 pp. quarto on a single leaf, beginning "I have had a long debate with myself" (£950). Quaritch remarks that a green pencil line downward through seven or eight lines at the top is "probably by John Nichols, though we cannot trace publication." But the green pencil mark in its reproduction resembles those commonly made by Anna Laetitia Barbauld on letters she edited for The Correspondence of Samuel Richardson (1804), as on Edward Young's letters. Quaritch here also offers "A Riddle," an autograph poem of twenty couplets written by Elizabeth Pennington (c.1750s), 2 pp. quarto, "annotated at the head by the...