Title: The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. ...
Publisher: Thomas Tegg; W. Sharpe & Son,[ &c.]
Publication Date: 1824
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Complete in five volumes. [2 blank], xxxv, [1], 340 printed pages, [4 blank at end]. [4 blank], [2], 360, [4].[4 blank], [2], 360, [4]. [4 blank], [2], 396, [4]. [4 blank], [2], 364 [including index], [4]. Half titles missing; engraved frontispiece portrait & 2 folding plates of Johnson's handwriting and signature in volume one. Each volume with engraved armorial bookplate of the Reverend W.R. Nash on the front paste-down endpaper. John Egan's neat ink signature on the first blank of the first volume. All edges marbled. Silk bookmarks sewn into each volume. Scattered foxing on the endpapers and blank preliminariy leaves. 10.5 x 16.5 cm. Contemporary matching full diced calf. Spines each with gilt lettered labels and elaborate gilt hand-tooling with three rows of interlinked circles, two panels of floreate scrolling and intricate ruled and tooled borders. Boards diced and with tooled gilt floral border. Corner edges gilt tooled. One label slightly damaged. Lower edge of upper board of volume three slightly creased. In 1834 Rev. W. R. Nash, lived in the Vicarage of Kilbolane & in 1840 in Barnsted, Blackrock, County Cork. John Egan was an Irish musical instrument maker active from 1804 to 1838, & considered the father of the modern Irish harp. The ancient Irish harp tradition, which goes back to medieval times, was dying out around 1800. Egan invented a completely new romantic type of Irish harp, which was very successful, and which formed the basis of all subsequent revivals. He overcame the restrictions of the traditional Irish harp by adding the dital tuning mechanism and pliable catgut strings of the European pedal harps, calling his creation "portables". Of the c.2000 harps Egan made, only 37 are known to survive and are worth about US$24,000. Samuel Johnson was an anti-imperialist who saw British rule in Ireland as an unjust exercise of colonial subjugation; he wrote (as opposed to remarked) very little on Ireland itself. WorldCat locates five copies, two in the UK and three in America. Not in the British Library. Bookseller Inventory # 4446