An Account of Russia as it was in the Year 1710
[London], Printed at Strawberry-Hill, 1758.
Small octavo (in half sheets), xxiv, 158, [1] (errata) pages with engraved title-vignette.
Early red straight-grain morocco; sides tooled with a frame of three fillets, the inner two with overlapping semicircular gouges; small six-pointed stars at the intersections; spine gilt in compartments; all edges gilt; minimal wear at the extremities; leather slightly mottled and marked, and slightly darkened on the spine; slight blemish to the right-hand margin of the title leaf (perhaps caused during the printing of the title-vignette); occasional light offsetting; a few trifling spots of foxing; an excellent copy.
An early publication from Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill Press in an elegant binding in the style of (or perhaps by) the influential English binder Roger Payne (1739-1797). 'Charles Lord Whitworth ... was Envoy Extraordinary to Russia in 1704, and Ambassador Extraordinary in 1710. Seven hundred copies were printed. Walpole contributed the "Advertisement" [pages (iii)-xxiv], in the course of which he related an incident more entertaining than any to be found in Lord Whitworth's account. "Lord Whitworth," he says, "had had a personal intimacy with the famous Czarina Catherine, at a time when her favours were not purchased, nor rewarded at so extravagant a rate as that of a diadem. When He had compromized the rupture between the court of England and the Czar, He was invited to a ball at court and taken out to dance by the Czarina. As they began the minuet, She squeezed him by the hand and said in a whisper, "Have you forgot little Kate?" Almost any reader will subscribe to Walpole's lament "that so agreable a writer as Lord Whitworth, has not left us more ample accounts of this memorable Woman"' (Havens: 'Horace Walpole and the Strawberry Hill Press', pages 21-22. We have corrected nine errors of transcription in this quotation).
Item #123738
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