BOUND FOR THE COMTE DE CALENBERG
JUVENAL, Decimus Junius, and Aulus Persius FLACCUS.
Satyrae.
London, J. Brindley, 1744.
12mo, pp. 116, the engraved title-page supplied in a very fine contemporary manucscript facsimile; slightly foxed at the extremities, but a good copy in attractive contemporary French morocco, gilt, wide border with flowers and birds, central coat of arms of the Comte de Calenberg blocked in gilt to each board, foot of spine numbered ‘4’ in gilt.
First Brindley edition, edited by the Irish classical scholar Usher Gahagan (d. 1749). John Brindley began to publish his series of well-printed duodecimo classics in 1744, for which Gahagan edited eleven works before his arrest and conviction for high treason, having become embroiled with a childhood friend in a scheme to file down coins for gold. He was executed at Tyburn on 20 February 1749.
Provenance:
The present volume was bound for Henri Reinecke, Comte de Calenberg (1685–1772), private counsellor and chamberlain to the Elector of Saxe and his minister plenipotentiary at the Imperial Court. He established himself at Brussels in 1754 and assembled an impressive library, including many volumes finely bound in red morocco. Among them was evidently a group of Brindley classics uniformly bound and numbered: besides our example, we find also a Sallust (numbered ‘7’, see Speeckaert) and five volumes of Ovid (numbered ‘9’ to ‘13’, see Bayntun).
The Calenberg library was dispersed by the bookseller Ermens in 1773, and subsequent marks of provenance in other Brindley volumes suggests that they were separated then or soon after.
ESTC T123550. See Bayntun, EBC 6 58; and Speeckaert, Quatre siecles de la reliure en Belgique 1500-1900 47.
