[BREWER, George.]
The Siamese Tales, being a Collection of Stories told to the Son of the Mandarin Sam-Sib, for the Purpose of engaging his Mind in the Love of Truth and Virtue. With an historical Account of the Kingdom of Siam. To which is added the principal Maxims of the Talapoins. Translated from the Siamese.
London, Vernor & Hood and Champante & Whitrow, 1796.
8vo, pp. [6], ii, 196, [2 (ads)], with an engraved frontispiece by Cook after Corbould; with half-title; mild spotting and offsetting to first few leaves, but a good copy; bound in contemporary tree sheep, spine gilt-ruled in compartments with manuscript paper label, sewn on 2 sunken cords; corners worn, endcaps chipped, joints cracked; ink ownership inscription ‘S. E. A. Lechmere | 1796.’ and later bookplate of Edmund Lechmere (dated 1917) to front pastedown.
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The Siamese Tales, being a Collection of Stories told to the Son of the Mandarin Sam-Sib, for the Purpose of engaging his Mind in the Love of Truth and Virtue. With an historical Account of the Kingdom of Siam. To which is added the principal Maxims of the Talapoins. Translated from the Siamese.
First edition of an anonymously published collection of ‘Siamese tales’, written as fables to increase their appeal to children.
George Brewer (b. 1766) served as a midshipman in his youth, visiting, America, India, China, and Scandinavia; in 1791 he was made a lieutenant in the Swedish navy, and not long after he read law in London. In his Introduction he states that the purpose of these supposedly translated tales is to ‘promote the love of virtue through the medium of fiction’ (p. 1) and, presumably inspired by travels in his youth, he sets the tales in Siam, ‘where the manners of the people are curious, and but little known’ (p. i). An American edition was printed in Baltimore in 1797.
Provenance:
The Lechmere family has been at Severn End since the eleventh century.
Raven 1796:18.
