TRANSLATED BY A FELLOW PRISONER
BOETHIUS, Severinus.
Of the Consolation of Philosophy. In five Books. Made English and illustrated with Notes, by the right honourable Richard Lord Viscount Preston.
London, J. D. for Awnsham and John Churchill, and Francis Hildyard, York, 1695.
8vo, pp. xxxii, 246, [2 (errata)], with an engraved frontispiece; lightly toned at extremities but a very good copy in contemporary panelled speckled calf, rebacked; old booklabel and stamps of Richmond Public Library, presented by T. J. Garstaing in 1943; modern bookplate of the Fox Pointe library of Howard Knohl.
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Of the Consolation of Philosophy. In five Books. Made English and illustrated with Notes, by the right honourable Richard Lord Viscount Preston.
First edition of this translation by the diplomat, politician and Jacobite conspirator Richard Graham, first Viscount Preston (1648–1695). The translation had initially been completed in 1680; after the Glorious Revolution, Preston was arrested as a supporter of James II in exile, released, and then rearrested and sent to the Tower in January 1691 for high treason. His death sentence was dropped after he confessed and named his co-conspirators, including William Penn. Allowed to retire to Yorkshire, he spent the rest of his life revising his Boethius for the press, his own experience in prison informing his understanding of the work – his Preface is full of buried allusions to his own experience.
ESTC R3694; Wing B 3433.
