ECCLES, Mary, Viscountess, and Gordon TURNBULL, eds..
James Boswell’s Book of Company at Auchinleck.
The Roxburghe Club, 1995.
£260
US $346 €287
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The Book of Company is much more than a visitor’s book, since James Boswell comments on the men and women he met and entertained, and the occasions of his doing so, are all his own. It is therefore an important addition to his many-sided self-portrait. Beginning in 1782, two years before Samuel Johnson died, and ending five months before Boswell’s own death in May 1795, it reflects Boswell’s anguished uncertainties, as well as the everyday details of where he was, with whom he dined, whom he saw in the evening and – punctually recorded – how many bottles of wine and spirits were dispatched. The book is here reproduced in full facsimile, interleaved with a transcript on facing pages. At the foot of each page is a commentary, largely drawn from Boswell’s correspondence and journals, which converts it into a comprehensive day by day diary of his thoughts and actions throughout the period.
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[LITURGY.]
Cerimonie piu’ notabili della messa privata; Cavate dalle rubriche del Missale, ed altri autori da un Sacerdote D.C.D.M. Coll’aggiunta di quelle della messa, e vespri solenni si pei vivi, che pei defunti, col modo di servire alla messa privata. Da un’Alunno del Seminario di Torino.
As far as we are aware unrecorded edition of this uncommon treatise on the celebration of the mass and its associated rituals. Dealing both with private (low) masses and with solemn mass and solemn vespers, the work explains the meaning and performance of the non-verbal aspects of the liturgy: genuflection, the sign of the cross, the communion of the faithful, the movements of the celebrant’s hands, the role of acolytes and thurifers (also during requiem masses), the office of the subdeacon and deacon, the use of incense, and instructions for serving at the missa private. The woodcut on page 200 depicts the altar, annotated with numbers referring to the relevant parts of the text.
The text itself appears first to have been published around the turn of the century; the earliest issue in SBN is a Naples printing of 1701, but that claims to be ‘novamente riviste, ed accresciute’, and is only of 134 pages in 12s. Other editions appeared in Pavia, Turin, and Modena, while Venetian printings were issued in 1739 and 1750. All seem very scarce.
Not in OCLC, which records only a Venice printing of the same year (in the Polish Union Catalogue); SBN does not record this edition.
[WARING, Sarah.]
The Minstrelsy of the Woods, or Sketches and Songs connected with the natural History of some of the most interesting British and foreign Birds, by the Author of “The Wild Garland,” &c.
First edition, inscribed by the author, of a charming ornithology with exquisite hand-coloured lithographic illustrations.