Lot 83: DONNE, JOHN.

Two works in one volume:

Condition Note:

Paradoxes, Problems, Essayes, Characters...To which is added a Book of Epigrams, Written in Latin by the same Author; translated into English by J. Maine, D.D. [As also, Ignatius his Conclave...] [T.N. for Humphrey Moseley, 1652], 12mo, third edition, first or second issue, lacking F5 to L4 (i.e. the whole of Ignatius his Conclave), title cropped to remove reference to Ignatius his Conclave, imprint and typographical border, then mounted; [bound with:] Essayes in Divinity...being Several Disquisitions, interwoven with Meditations and Prayers: Before he entred into Holy Orders... T.M. for Richard Marriot, 1651, 12mo, first edition, A2-6 (dedication to Sir H. Vane Junior) and blank p2 cancelled as usual in composite volume

two works in one volume, later calf, occasional spotting, closely trimmed throughout (but not affecting text), newspaper clipping affixed to rear free endpaper, some wear to binding, rebacked, corners repaired

[Paradoxes:] Wing D1866; Keynes 45; Grolier Wither to Prior 297; [Essayes:] Wing D1861; Keynes 50; Grolier Wither to Prior 295

"J.A.", bookplate with motto "Indocti Discant; Ament Meminisse Periti"; A[rthur].K[ay]., bookplate; I.A. Shapiro, ownership inscription

The Essayes are usually found, as here, bound up with the Juvenilia of 1652 under the title Paradoxes, Problems, etc. Keynes suggests that perhaps the Essayes "had not sold well, and the younger Donne then sought to temper the secularity, and even obscenity, of the Juvenilia by issuing them in company with the Essayes in Divinity and in this way to invest the volume with an altogether fictitious respectability...Beyond the facts that the volumes usually occur bound up together and that the original dedication of the Essayes in Divinity has been cancelled in whole or in part, there is nothing in the bibliographical constitution of the whole to shew that they actually form one volume." Keynes also suggests that when the younger Donne combined the two works to make the Juvenilia more respectable, he suppressed the Essayes' dedication to the republican Sir Henry Vane, and retained for the composite volume the more politic dedication of the Juvenilia to the royalist Francis Lord Newport.