GILT PAPER AS ERSATZ CALF
HAMILTON, ‘Eliza’ [Elizabeth].
Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah; written previous to, and during the Period of his Residence in England. To which is prefixed a preliminary Dissertation on the History, Religion, and Manners, of the Hindoos. The second Edition.
London, J. Crowder for G. & J. Robinson, 1801.
Two vols, 8vo, pp. I: [4], lvi, [4], 271, [1 (blank)], II: [2], 349, [1]; a very good set, uncut, in contemporary brown paper over boards, spines gilt-ruled in compartments with gilt red morocco lettering-pieces, sewn two-on on 3 sunken cords; some rubbing to boards with a few light marks, extremities a little bumped with some slight chipping, but an excellent example nonetheless.
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Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah; written previous to, and during the Period of his Residence in England. To which is prefixed a preliminary Dissertation on the History, Religion, and Manners, of the Hindoos. The second Edition.
Second edition of Hamilton’s first separately published work, a pseudo-Oriental satire on British society, in a very well-preserved gilt paper binding imitating calf.
The first major work of the Hiberno-Scottish writer Elizabeth Hamilton (1756–1816), the Translation first appeared in 1796 and follows the model of Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes in disguising a critical view of contemporary society as the innocent impressions of a fictional outsider. Hamilton offers insight into the recent events in France and America, on her native Ulster, and on her perennial interests, for female education and against British colonialism.
The present set is bound in gilt brown paper evidently intended to look like calf, a showy but inexpensive compromise between the drab paper boards and the finished leather bindings typically seen on novels of the period. The use of paper in place of leather is a not uncommon and often unremarked feature of cheaper eighteenth-century bindings, with coloured paper found disguised as morocco for spine labels or brown marbled paper sides, giving the impression of tree calf; it is, however, unusual to find faux-leather paper as the covering material for the whole binding at this date.
