Head, Richard, and Francis Kirkman | Restoration knavery and chicanery

Head, Richard, and Francis Kirkman

The English rogue: Described in the Life of Meriton Latroon … Being a Compleat History of the Most Eminent Cheats of Both Sexes. [London]: sn, [1874]

4 volumes, 8vo (216 x 149 mm). Title-page of vol. 1 printed in red and black, frontispiece portraits in vols. 1 and 3, 10 plates; light, occasional foxing, chiefly marginal. minor loss to fore-edge of plate opposite p. 1 in vol. 2. Nineteenth-century half brown calf over maroon cloth, spines gilt, marbled endpapers, top edges gilt; joints dry.

A facsimile reprint of the 1665–1680 edition. Richard Head (1637?-86?) was a prolific hack writer whose fortunes were reportedly somewhat limited by his dissipated lifestyle and addiction to gambling—which nevertheless inspired his vivid accounts of contemporary lowlife. A characteristically coarse and indecent work, The English Rogue (1665) was perhaps Head's most popular book. It was initially refused a printing license until expurgated, although copies of an unexpurgated edition are supposed to have been distributed illegally. To capitalize upon its popularity the writer and bookseller Francis Kirkman (b. 1632) reissued The English Rogue in 1666 and then published a Second, Third, and Fourth Part between 1671 and 1680. Although Kirkman implied that all these additions resulted from a collaboration between himself and Head, the latter disowned responsibility for any part except the first.

PROVENANCE:

G. Catalani (bookplate on front pastedowns) — R. H. Murta (bookplate on front free endpapers) — Harry F. Marks, 183 Broadway, New York (bookseller's ticket on rear pastedown of vol. 1)