Dibdin, Thomas Frognall

Estimate

2,500 - 3,500 USD

bidding is closed

Description

Dibdin, Thomas Frognall
Here Begyneth a littel tome and Hathe to name The Lincolne Nosegay Beynge a Brefe Table of certaine bokes in the possession of Maister Thomas Frognall Dibdin clerk. Which bookes be to be sold to him who shal gyue the moste for ye same. [London, c. 1815]
Ink, paper and cow

8vo (7 1/8 x 4 1/4 in.; 180 x 108 mm). Sixteen pages including half-title and title; very occasional light foxing. Nineteenth-century half calf with corners, blind-stamped in compartments (blank leaves watermarked 1837); bottom of spine damaged.

Provenance

Henry Grimes (signature) —William Reeve (manuscript ex-dono). Christie's London, 10 July 1992, lot 168. acquisition: Purchased at the foregoing sale through Bernard Quaritch

Literature

Jackson 35; Windle and Pippin A24b

Catalogue Note

The early forgery, perhaps even rarer than the genuine first edition.

A note in pencil on the first blank mentions that twenty-five copies were printed. According to Jackson: "The original price of the 1814 edition was three schillings and six-pence. When copies began to fetch eight times as much in the antiquarian market, a surreptitious reprint was issued by someone whom Dibdin appears to have known, according to a note in his Northern Tour I (1838), p. 106. This forgery may be recognized by the absence of the printer's imprint on ppp. [2] and 16."

Windle and Pippin mentioned Rabaiotti's theory that the reprint was sponsored by Beckford. Others think it could have been instigated by Dibdin himself. The watermark IPING 1814—identical to that in the Grolier Club copy—may indicate that the forgery was printed in the two years following the first edition.