[SWIFT, Jonathan and Alexander POPE]

Miscellanies in Prose and Verse. The First Volume. [Together with] Miscellanies. The Second Volume

London, Benjamin Motte, 1727 [first editions thus].

Octavo, two volumes, 20, 408 pages and [ii] (leaf of advertisements, recto blank], [xiv], 358 pages, with an engraved device to both titles.

Recent full calf with gilt-lettered title-labels on the spines; minimal light foxing and other signs of use and age; cancelled library stamps of the Public Library of South Australia; a very good set with a modern bookplate on the front pastedown of each volume.

The 1727 'Miscellanies' was issued by Swift and Alexander Pope in an attempt to prevent piracy of their shorter works. In their preface to the first volume, dated 27 May 1727, they write: 'The Papers that compose the first of these Volumes were printed about sixteen years ago [Swift's 'Miscellanies' of 1711], to which there are now added two or three small Tracts; and the Verses are transferred into a Volume apart. The second (and perhaps a third) will consist like this, of several small Treatises in Prose, wherein a friend or two are concerned. Having both of us been extremely ill-treated by some Booksellers, (especially one Edmund Curll,) it was our Opinion that the best Method we could take for justifying ourselves, would be to publish whatever loose Papers in Prose and Verse, we have formerly written'. Most of the content of the first volume is by Swift; the second contains John Arbuthnot's 'History of John Bull' and various shorter pieces, some by Swift. Pope's contribution is small, but the second volume does contain his 'Key to the Lock' (published under the pseudonym Esdras Barnivelt). The third volume was published in 1728 and is not present here.

Teerink and Scouten 25 (1a) and (2b) (P3 is a cancel and the initial leaf of advertisements is present). [2 items].