On 8 September 2021 Fonsie Mealy’s first sale of the contents of the Howth Castle (at the north end of Dublin’s harbor) were auctioned off. These included three portraits of Jonathan Swift. One is a mezzotint of Swift seated, turned front right with book held in his lap, captioned “The Reverend Doctor Jonathan Swift Dean of St. Patrick’s Dublin, Printed for John Bowles & Son, Lond. 1744” (lot 413, sold for €580 + €145 commission). Lot 414 was a painted head and shoulders portrait of Swift in wig looking front right, presented as “After Francis Bindon, early 19th-century Irish School,” but, as Andrew Carpenter and James Woolley confirm, it copies the oil on canvas that Charles Jervas painted circa 1718, now in London’s National Portrait Gallery (sold for €3600 + €900). Much more importantly, the sale included Irish painter Francis Bindon’s large portrait of Swift commission by Swift’s friend William St. Lawrence, Lord Howth, for which Swift sat for several hours on 16 June 1735 as he that day wrote to Thomas Sheridan. Since 1735 the original has been a treasure of Howth Castle, where Swift occasionally visited, charmed by Lord Howth’s young wife Lucy. The full-length portrait should be Googled: Swift in wig and cloak stands holding a scroll denoted “The Drapier’s fourth Letter to the Whole People of Ireland”; to his right in the hazy background is a Winged Victory and behind him on the floor to the left is a prostrate nude man representing William Wood. Various copies of the painting exist, including one by Robert Home in the Examination Hall at Trinity College, Dublin. Francis Bindon, born in Ireland, studied painting in London, and on return painted portraits and designed a number of houses, including Woodstock in County Kilkenny. After his death in 1765, Bindon was eulogized in Faulkner’s Dublin Journal as “one of the best painters and architects this nation has ever produced.” The portrait was estimated at €300–400,000, but sold for €234,000 + €58,500 because it was understood that the portrait would be claimed by the government for an institution—it will hang in the National Gallery of Art (On 3 October 2021, The Sunday Times reported, “the Department of Arts confirmed yesterday that it had given money to a number of cultural institutions to help buy Francis Bindon’s portrait of Swift” and many other items.)As in previous years, manuscripts by Isaac Newton were auctioned. On 6 March 2020 at Bonhams New York, a Newton autograph in English sold for $106,325: “Extensively reworked, underlined and amended, . . . [it] speaks directly to the relationship of God and Christ through the lens of the gospel of John, shedding light on the philosophical underpinnings” of the 1667 Philosophiæ naturalis principia mathematica (4 pp., c. 1710, illustrated at Bonhams’s website). On 1 June 2020 at Bonhams New York, $81,325 was paid for two pages of Newton’s unpublished notes in Latin from 1667 on the Belgian Jan Baptist Van Helmont’s De Peste, recording causes, modes of transmission, and possible cures for the plague, which had in 1665–67 forced Newton from his studies at Trinity College, Cambridge. Higher prices were foretold when in early December 2020 Sotheby’s London sold for £378,000 ($504,000) three pages of Newton’s notes on the dimensions of Egyptian pyramids that had been burnt around the edges, said by some to have been caused by a dog toppling a candle. On 8 July 2021 Christie’s London sold for £1,702,500 a two-page MS with Newton’s draft revisions to three sections of the Philosophiæ naturalis principia mathematica. The autograph, in Latin, has “39 lines in Newton’s hand, alongside 14 lines and two diagrams by the Scottish mathematician and astronomer David Gregory.” Gregory (1659–1708) had been elected Savilian Professor of Astronomy in 1691 at Oxford, partly on Newton’s recommendation. The MS dates from Gregory’s visiting Newton in Cambridge during 4–10 May 1696, when they worked on a never-published revised edition of the Principia. With other papers involved in their collaborations, the pages passed from Gregory to his heirs and were “most recently in the notable collection of Maurice Car.” Offered as part of Christie’s “Classic Week Exceptional Sale,” the unpublished MS (rare because scientific) brought the most ever paid for a Newton MS.Newton shared rooms at Cambridge from 1665 with John Wickins, who became Newton’s amanuensis, lab assistant, and close friend; the partnership continued until March 1683, when Wickins left Cambridge to take a living in Monmouthshire. The endurance of this friendship is testified by two of Newton’s most important works sent years later to Wickins. Bonhams London on 24 June 2021 offered them as lots 72–73: the second Cambridge edition of the Principia, 1713, quarto (£47,750), and the Opticks (1704) in its first Latin edition, Optice (S. Smith & B. Walford, 1706), quarto (unsold). On 31 March 2021 Bonhams London sold a notebook of Wickins, “unseen for 140 years,” containing transcripts of three letters from Newton to Wickins; 103 leaves in contemporary black morocco + 3 pp. of inserted provenance notes (£62,750). The first letter of c.1672 discusses Newton’s “dispute with the Jesuit Father Linus about his particle theory of light” and his new arrangements, following interference by Robert Hooke, to have the “two-foot” mirror ground for the telescope that Newton and Wickins were to build (it will be featured in Opticks); the second, from 1677, on theological issues (Newton was struggling with the expectation that he would be ordained as Fellows, like Wickins, were expected to); and the third, dated 19 August 1682, on various religious authors (“Jerome is worth having for his learning though not for his religion”). At least one of the letters is signed “your very loving chamber-fellow, Is. Newton.”Quintessential Rare Books of California listed on AbeBooks a copy in contemporary calf of Newton’s The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy . . . Translated into English by Andrew Motte. To which are added, The Laws of the Moon’s Motion, according to Gravity. By John Machin, 2 vols. (for Benjamin Motte, 1729; ESTC T18677, T142590), with two folding letterpress tables, 47 folding engraved plates, and three engraved headpieces by Motte; with the bookplate of English chemist Hugh Lee Pattinson, FRS. More remarkable than the price of $175,000 for an edition located in 100 copies by the ESTC is the presence of five manuscript leaves with contemporary transcriptions of James Thomson’s Summer and Newton’s epitaph.Princeton acquired three association copies of special value to it from John Price (London). First, the republican radical author and publisher John Almon’s The History of the Minority Dvring the Years 1762, 1763, 1764, and 1765. Exhibiting the Condvct, Principles, and Views, of that Party. The Fovrth Impression (“Printed in the Year MDCCLXV; and Reprinted, with Some Additions, in the Year MDCCLXVI”); bound with Humphrey Cotes, An Enqviry into the Condvct of a Late Right Honovrable Commoner (for J. Almon, [n.d. but the 2nd–5th impressions are “1766”]), signed “N.C.M.S.C.” on p. 72; two vols in one, 8vo: pp. xii [1], 10–332; [3–5] 6–72; contemporary calf with red label and gilt star in spine compartments and in each corner. This copy was evidently bound for Thomas Hollis, another republican, famous for gifts to Harvard and Princeton. In 1754 Hollis sent Princeton, then the College of New Jersey, ten guineas, and in 1764 he sent it his edition of Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, also bound with Hollis’s characteristic star-device in the corners found in this copy of Almon and Cotes. Cotes’s tract, an examination of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (d. 1778), was published in five or six impressions by Almon and also reprinted in Ireland. ESTC does not note that settings are shared by a quarto edition (N65568) and an octavo (T64630) without date or impression number, but the ECCO copies linked to the records (at Kansas and the British Library) share the same settings. Princeton also acquired from Price the Earl of Orrery’s Remarks on the Life and Writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift, 3rd ed. (A. Millar, 1752), in contemporary calf with the ownership inscription of Samuel Davies (1723–1761), poet, hymn-writer, and fourth president of Princeton, also known for his 1760 catalogue of its library. Price thinks it likely that Davies bought the copy while in England with Gilbert Tennent raising money for the college in 1753–55 (at least £3000 was raised, allowing the college to move to Princeton and to construct Nassau Hall). Price compares the signature (“Saml: Davies”) convincingly with others extant.The third association volume acquired by Princeton was Henry Boult’s A Supplement to the Abridgment of all the Statutes of King William and Queen Mary, and of King William III, and Queen Anne. From . . . 1704, to the first of April, 1708 (by Her Majesties printers, et al., 1708), ESTC N24757; 8vo: [36], 144, [14] pp., with the title-page signed “Wm. Paterson.” Paterson (1745-1806), born in Ireland but raised in Princeton, attended there the College of New Jersey. He rose to Attorney General of New Jersey in 1776, signed the Constitution, and became Governor of New Jersey. As Governor, he recodified the English statutes to form the laws of New Jersey, a task in which he probably put this volume to use. It supplements An Exact Abridgment to 1708 in two volumes that was begun by Joseph Washington and completed by Boult in 1708.Price listed and sold to research libraries several poetical works of note. To the Bodleian went Virgil’s Æneid. Translated by Mr. Pitt. Vol. I. (for A. Bettesworth & C. Hitch, W. Hinchliffe, and L. Gilliver, 1736), 8vo: viii, 230 pp.; in contemporary red goatskin with gilt borders and a lozenge on both covers, all edges gilt, with marbled endpapers, and the contemporary autograph of “Ann Portman” on the front endpapers. Foxon (P411) notes that the first of its four books was reissued from Pitt’s 1728 An Essay on Virgil’s Æneid. Pitt did not continue this publication scheme, but Robert Dodsley et al., published his complete translation in four quartos, 1740–43. Samuel Johnson ranked Pitt’s translation second only to Dryden’s and noted it was the more popular in the period. Pitt’s distinction in verse translation began with the submission of Lucan’s Pharsalia for admission to New College, Oxford. Price identifies the former owner as the Ann Portman (1707–1781) who was married to the wealthy Dorset landowner Henry William Portman and whose portrait was painted by Thomas Gainsborough. And McGill acquired the two volumes of Mary Leapor’s posthumous poems, both octavos with subscription lists (the editions supported Leapor’s father, a gardener): Poems upon Several Occasions (J. Roberts, 1748), ESTC T127827; pp. 15, [5], 282; and Poems upon Several Occasions. By the late Mrs. Leapor, of Brackley in Northamptonshire. The Second and Last Volume ([by S. Richardson] J. Roberts, 1751), T136743; pp. xxxv, [1], 324; uniformly bound in “late 18th-century quarter green morocco, gilt spines, marbled boards” with bookplates of W. Dash. Price identifies the owner as William Dash (1799–c.1883), a bookseller, like his father Thomas, of Kettering, Northamptonshire. Not surprisingly, what with Leapor’s being a daughter of the shire, Dash’s book catalogues of 1820 and 1824 included Leapor’s poetry.In 2021 the Ehrenpreis Centre for Swift Studies acquired a half-dozen more editions that had been in Swift’s library, a difficult task now that the replication is over 90 percent complete. The harvest included Biblia Sacra: sive, Testamentum Vetus . . . et Testamentum Novum (R. Nortonus . . . [for] Nathanielem Ponder, 1680), ESTC R37424, Wing B2763, 12mo: 959 [1]; also Evaristo Gherardi, Le Théatre italien, 6 vols. (Amsterdam: Adrian Braakman, 1701), and An Exact Abridgment of all Statutes in Force and Use from the . . . Magna Carta . . . Begun by Edmund Wingate (by His Majesties’ Printers, et al., 1700), R34888, 8vo: [2], 726, [58, index] pp. The collection also includes books read by Swift but not recorded in his library’s catalogues, and, thus, also acquired were St. Irenaeus, Aduersus Valentini (Paris, 1639), and Olaus Magnus, Historia (Basel, [1567]), excerpted by Swift from unidentified editions, probably at Sir William Temple’s library in Moor Park (1697–98).In February 2021 Stuart Bennett (Charleston, SC) published Fifty Books by and about Women of the British Isles, with many items suited to this survey. Among these is the rare first edition of Mary Davys’s last novel, The Accomplish’d Rake: or, Modern Fine Gentlemen (no place: “Printed in the Year M DCC XXVII”), in contemporary gilt-ruled calf with stamps of Hugh Selbourne’s library, dispersed at Bonhams in 2015 (Bennett illustrates title-page and binding; $6000; sold to the trade). ESTC N14929 notes only three copies, to which Bennett adds Illinois. ESTC notes 12mo, but Bennett corrects this to 18mo in sixes; vi, [ii], 196 pp.; with on the leaf after p. vi an advertisement for books including two by Davys sold by J. Stephens. From the list Stanford acquired two first editions of Aphra Behn: her comedy The Dutch Lover (Thomas Dring, 1673), 4to: [xii], 96, “87-88,” [2] pp., in modern half-calf; and Behn’s amorous mix of prose and verse, La Montre: or The Lover’s Watch (by R. H. for W. Canning, 1686), 8vo: [xx], 243 [1] pp., with engraved frontispiece, plus as extra-illustration “six 18th-century engravings of amorous subjects,” in nineteenth-century citron morocco with the gilt arms of Charles Stanhope, 4th Earl of Harrington (1780–1851), and a modern bookplate of the Westfield Athenaeum (deaccessioned c.2013).Bennett offered an unrecorded copy of a compilation including magazine pieces by Eliza Haywood and Frances Brooke and a novel by Charlotte Lennox: The Ladies Friend: By Euphrosine. Containing, with other Matter, the whole of a new Novel, intitled Sophia. Written by Mr. Lennox (Dublin: Printed by James Hoey, junior, 1762), 12mo: [ii], 132, 156, [4, advts]; in “original smooth, sprinkled Irish calf, morocco spine label,” with a 1765 ownership inscription on pastedown (Bennett illustrates title-page, the first page of text, and spine; $3,250; sold to another bookdealer). After a dedication to the Marchioness of Kildare, comes a “Number I” with the first number of Haywood’s The Young Lady, 1756 (from which comes the nom de plume “Euphrosine”). But, observes Bennett, “there are expansions and variations in the text which suggests . . . Hoey might have had access to additional material.” The miscellaneous material following in the first pagination sequence includes “substantial passages taken from Frances Brooke’s periodical The Old Maid ” (e.g., 10–12 and 87–89); and Haywood’s Epistles for Ladies (I.142ff) is printed on pp. 51ff. “Select characters” from The Tatler are also included. The second pagination sequence (on 2D-P6) contains Lennox’s novel, which Bennett thinks likely to be the same setting as that separately issued by Hoey in 1762 as Sophia. By Mrs. Lennox (ESTC N37153, [2], 156 [4, advts) and found only at the British Library and the Huntington.Also listed was Miscellaneous Poems upon Several Occasions. Written by a Young Lady (for H[annah]. Hindmarsh, 1698), 8vo: [vi] 96, [2], in rebacked contemporary blind-ruled sheep (from Hugh Selbourne’s library, sold at Bonhams, 2015; $7000). This unreprinted edition is among the rarest seventeenth- century volumes by an English woman poet: only three copies are located on OCLC and ESTC (R180611). Bennett notes, “the dedication to the soon-to-be M.P. Edward Irby [is] subscribed ‘Your Obliged Kinswoman and Servant, E. W.’” ESTC fails to note the author’s initials and neglects the final [2] with errata ([2] is also present in Yale’s pagination). Among the enticing lines warding off suitors quoted by Bennett are these from “On a Gentleman Who Wish’d himself My Cat”:Bennett’s catalogue includes the manuscript verse album, entitled “Family Poems,” kept by Mary Leigh (d. 1797), the daughter of Rev. Theophilus Leigh, Master of Balliol College and the wife of her cousin Rev. Thomas Leigh of Adlesdrop, bound c.1780 and dated “1795” on pastedown where contents are surveyed; with 157 4to pages of MS text (sold to the Morgan Library). Mary Leigh was Jane Austen’s mother’s first cousin, and Bennett remarks, “It seems likely that the teen-age Jane would have seen this album on her first visit to Adlesdrop in 1794.” His extensive account belongs in Notes and Queries. From this list the Charleston Library Society fittingly acquired the autograph memoir of the 1778 journey from Charleston to London by Louisa Susannah Wells, later Aikman (written c.1800–1802), folio: [6] 1–78 with pp. 31–32 excised. Wells was the daughter of Robert Wells, loyalist bookseller and newspaper publisher. She fled with loyalists to England, and their ship was captured by the British and forced to stop over in New York. A transcript of the MS was published in 1906.As is usually the case with catalogues from Christopher Edwards (Oxfordshire), there is too much to note all of importance in List 80, English Books & Manuscripts (February 2021). Those researching crimes against women should find interesting—it is available on ECCO—The Polygamist: or, The Lustful Priest . . . by an Irish Laureat (“for A. More, near St. Paul’s” [c.1740]), 8vo: pp. [ii], 30-plus generic frontispiece of a statue of a priestly figure holding a book, in gray boards with cloth spine, with a nineteenth-century MS account of the piece’s villain (sold to the Huntington). As Edwards sums it up, “This is an angry poem about a sociopath in clerical garb, supposedly by one of his victims.” The poet’s introduction proclaims, “I will rehearse | Th’Adventures of this fall’n Priest, in Verse.” The poem is supplemented by correspondence with those who may have evidence against bigamist James Christie (pp. [22]–30). Christie, born in Ireland, abandoned three wives in England, Ireland, and Boston and, after imprisonment on a charge of bigamy in Derby in 1738, was at large in Derby living as a curate. Edwards also lists Verses in Honour of Their Present Majesties. By T. Scott (for J. Walthoe, 1727), a patriotic poem by an admirer of Addison and Pope, which contrasts “the beneficent reign of George II with the tyranny of . . . Japan.” The poem, beginning “Young as I am, unskilled to rehearse,” is not in Foxon, and ESTC T84536 records a sole copy at the British Library with a half-title missing from this copy; in recent wrappers: 8vo: [3]–20 (sold to the Clark Library). Missing from the ESTC but present in Foxon for a sole copy at the Bodleian is a second edition of Stephen Duck’s The Vision: A Poem on the Death of her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Caroline ([by S. Richardson] for J. Roberts and J. Jackson, 1737), folio: [iv], 7, [1], with half-title, disbound (sold to Kansas)—one suspects it has a press-variant title-page.Also offered is Sacred Poems; By J[abez]. Earle, Chaplain to His Grace the Duke of Douglas (‘LONDON, | Printed in the Year 1726.’); 12mo: [iv] 37, [1]; in “brown library cloth, morocco spine, lettered in gilt” (£950). ESTC T79197, locating four copies including the British Library’s on ECCO. Edwards finds it curious that Earle would “publicize his patronage” by Douglas, who had killed his nephew in a family quarrel in 1725 and was living in exile in the Netherlands. Earle (1676?–1768) was a dissenting minister in London whose principal earnings probably came from sermons and religious publications, particularly his Sacramental Exercises (1708), frequently reprinted, popular in Boston and late in the century in Scotland. He published multiple verse collections, including Verses upon Several Occasions in 1723 and with a different printer in 1724.Equally rare listings are first editions of Allan Ramsay’s Robert, Richy and Sandy. A Pastoral on the Death of Matthew Prior (by S. Palmer, for B. Lintot and sold by J. Roberts, 1721), the variant with A4 mis-signed “A2” known in a single copy, disbound (sold to the Clark Library)—the title refers to Harley, Steele, and Pope. Also the first edition of Ambrose Philips’s To the Honourable Miss Carteret (Dublin: George Grierson, [1725]), T51230 and Foxon P221, a seven-page folio on thick paper (£2500); and also the first London edition of The Prude, A Tale: In Two Cantos (for J. Roberts, et al., 1722), 8vo: 29 [1], lacking a final blank, disbound (£1750), two in N39469; Foxon P1154; previously printed in Dublin. Note too, at least for the date “2 Januar” 1704/5, Narcissus Luttrell’s copy of the first edition of John Philips’s Blenheim. A Poem (Tho. Bennet, 1705), commissioned as the Tory response to Addison’s The Campaign: folio: [ii], 22, in recent boards (£1250). Here too is the third edition but first authorized of Philips’s The Splendid Shilling (Tho. Bennet, 1705), the rarer issue with the setting of sheet B “with the misprint ‘Eclip’d’ in l. 31”; folio: [iv], 8 pp; in modern boards (£450). The half-title is signed and dated 1705 with the note “Authore J: Philips Ædis Christi Oxon” by Thomas Frewen (1687/8–1738), who entered Christ Church in 1703, where Philips lived until 1707.Illustrating its title page, Edwards also listed (and sold to the Bodleian) an unrecorded blank-verse poem entitled A Divine Poem on the Origin, Fall and Redemption of Man: Likewise the Last General Conflagration, Resurrection and Judgment . . . In Three Books. . . . By Thomas Woollery, A.B. (“Gloucester: Printed by R. Raikes, and Sold by W. Bond, Bookseller, in Stroud; J. Wilson, in Horse-street, Bristol; W. Wolley in Worcester; J. Ballinger in Cirencester; and J. Hunts in Hereford. 1725”); price 1s; folio (A2 B-F2), 24 pages, in new boards. Although no other publications are recorded for Woollery, Edwards has discovered that he was born in Terbury, Gloucestershire, and entered Balliol College in 1709, taking his B.A. in 1712; ordained, he was nominated “to be the curate in Bremilham, Wiltshire.” Edwards finds the poem, like the dedicatee, Francis Gastrell, Bishop of Chester, a Tory in politics. The imprint reflects a healthy networking by Robert Raikes and provincial bookdealers for local productions as early as 1725, and that it is a folio is more surprising.From the same list the Huntington acquired the unrecorded New-Year’s-Day: An Ode for the Year 1753, without imprint, folio: A2 (A1 and A2 signed), four pages; beginning “Health to our country” and ending “Long live the King,” with much praise for the royal family; in new boards with three MS corrections in a contemporary hand (now ESTC N509744). Edwards speculates that this may be “a tradesman’s poem, handed out to customers at Christmas and New Year.”In June 2022 Edwards listed on AbeBooks the first recorded complete copy of an edition of two poems by Edward Ward: The Republican Procession, or, The Tumultuous Cavalcade: An Hudibrastick Poem. To which is added, An Answer, By the same Author; Being a Satyr against Himself (“Printed; and are to be Sold by the Booksellers of London and Westminster. m dcc xxvii”), 1s., 8vo in fours, 48 pages, [3] –36, disbound ($385 from the library of the late Roger Lonsdale). ESTC T44804, noting six copies (Princeton’s is on Google Books and transcribed above), all with only the first 48-page poem and not the supplemental rejoinder. As Edwards’s copy proves, Foxon (in W162), failing to find the whole issue extant, rightly suggested that the “Answer” was likely to be Ward’s The Hudibrastick Brewer: or, A Preposterous Union between Malt and Meter. A Satyr upon the Suppos’d Author of The Republican Procession, published, like The Republican Procession, in 1714 [self-published using J. Morphew, with the spelling “Hudribrastick”], ESTC T139167 and Foxon W96. This second poem was a reissue without its title-page; since most copies lack it, presumably they were sold after the remaindered sheets of Hudribrastick Brewer had run out. But note that the publication has a new setting of The Republican Procession: none of the earlier settings has 48 pages. Though it has no cut ornaments, I suspect it was printed by William Downing to judge from Ward’s frequent reliance of Downing’s press in 1718–24 and Downing’s regular use of all small capitals for the date: compare Ward’s Miscellaneous Writings “Printed by W.D. . . . m dcc xviii,” T153563, or his The Dancing Devils “for A. Bettesworth, . . . m dcc xxiv”; T32046, with Downing’s factotum of twin spires flanking the opening. Edwards observes that The Republican Procession treating the Queen’s death and the triumphant return of Marlborough to London had become dated by 1727, but he conjectures, “the death of George I in June 1727 . . . prompted the poem’s republication.”Among the unrecorded editions to come on the market is A Seasonable Address to the Inhabitants of Staffordshire, Especially to the lower Sort of People, by John Swan, a physician in Newcastle under Line, Staffordshire, without imprint [1745], small 4to, eight pages, with drop-head title, listed July 2022 by John Turton of Crook, Co. Durham, in the PDF 32 Items from Stock (£1650). This is a “vigorous call to arms” against the Pretender, assuring commoners they have as much to lose as the gentry. The address ends on p. 5, signed “with a printed J; the additional information regarding authorship is written [then] in a contemporary hand. The concluding pages contain the song ‘Briton strike home: or the Staffordshire Soldiers Resolutions against the Rebels,’” with several alterations “in the same hand as above.” Turton adds that there is a printer’s ornament on final page that is “probably London rather than provincial.” The item includes a two-page typed, signed letter from Percy Dobell & Son to Kenneth Monkman with bibliographical details, noting prior sale by Peter Murray Hill. Turton finds nothing by Swan in ESTC or OCLC except The Entire Works of Dr. Thomas Sydenham, translated “By John Swan, M.D.” (E. Cave, 1742), an edition with a memoir of Sydenham by Samuel Johnson. R. Simms, after obtaining Dr. Swan’s letter-book, transcribed in Notes and Queries a letter of 3 March 1762 from Dr. Swan to Johnson, asking Johnson, “upon ye footing of an old frd & acquaintaince,” to help a man named Watts to find work with a bookseller, particularly in translation (issue 175 [4 May 1907], 348–49). Simms notes that Swan practiced in “Newcastle, Staffs. for half a century” and died in 1768.Once again Jarndyce (London) listed inexpensive disbound copies of editions of plays not in the ESTC. It lists Sir John Vanbrugh’s The Provok’d Wife (Edinburgh: Printed by and for Martin & Wotherspoon, 1768), 12mo ([5] 6–83 [1]), the first Edinburgh edition since A. Donaldson’s in 1759, with a different pagination (c. $41 + $43 shipping). Jarndyce also lists what is at least an unrecorded issue of Charles Shadwell’s The Fair Quaker of Deal.; . . . As it is now Acted at the Theatre-Royal in Smock-Alley. By Mr. Charles Shadwell (“Dublin: Printed for W. Smith, at the Hercules . . . M DCC LVII.”), uncut and disbound (c. $27 + $45 shipping). Jessica Starr at Jarndyce suspects this may be a press-variant issue of a recorded edition. The copy has the same publisher and pagination (including p. 70 as “62”) as ESTC record T35191, but the latter differs in its title, including “Theatres-Royal in London and Dublin. With the two celebrated sea-songs, as sung by Mr. Wilder. By Mr. Charles Shadwell.”Thomas Rare Books in Suffolk listed in August 2022 on AbeBooks an unrecorded edition or at least reissue of A Discovery of Divine Mysteries: or The Nature and Efficacy of the Soul of Man. Considered in all its Faculties . . . By C.B. D.D. Fellow of the Royal Society. (“for Eben. Tracy, at the Three Bibles on London-Bridge,” 1709), 8vo: [xx]. 447 [1], in original full calf (c. $838). The only other edition is Tracy’s octavo of 1700 with pagination [ii] 447 [1], recorded for three locations in ESTC R10203; at the very least, Thomas’s discovery offers expanded preliminaries. Dr. “C. B., F.R.S.” is not found elsewhere in the ESTC.One hates to add another edition to the dozens recorded for Richard Allestree’s The Whole Duty of Man (ESTC has 302 records for author and title), but Francis Edwards of Hay on Wye has forced the matter. This is a 12mo with the imprint “Printed by W. Norton for R. Pawlet,” 1703 and pagination [24] 472 [8], in old calf with gilt ruling, with ownership MS “Sidney Edwards her book” (c. $68; frontispiece of Moses and undated engraved title page illustrated by the dealer). It shares the engravings, format, and pagination of that edition “by W.N. for E. and R. Pawlet” 1705 (T109231); so, it could potentially be another issue. But the demand was there for another edition: the other eight editions printed for Pawlet in 1700–1705 all have other formats and paginations, differing from each other (including folio, octavo, and eighteenmo).Peter Harrington (London) lists Defoe’s Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress: or, a History of the Life and Vast Variety of Fortunes of Mademoiselle de Belau . . . Being the Person known by the Name of the Lady Roxana (for T. Warner, et al., 1724), T70630, 8vo (frontispiece + [viii], 407 [1]), 192 x 115, in nineteenth-century speckled calf by Riviere with marbled endpapers, and armorial bookplate of Wentworth Henry Canning, 2nd Viscount Allendale (c. $37,495, illustrating frontispiece and title page). ESTC notes 17 libraries, but only three in the UK. Harrington notes only two copies have been at auction in 44 years; the edition has never been noticed in my columns before. Harrington also lists a complete run of Defoe’s periodical Mercator: or, Commerce Retrieved, published for Benj. Tooke and John Barber thrice a week in 181 folio numbers (26 May 1713–20 July 1714), in rebacked contemporary mottled speckled sheep (c. $10,935). ESTC P1414 lists perhaps a half dozen complete run