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The Diary of Master William Silence: A Study of Shakespeare & of Elizabethan Sport.

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First edition of Madden’s reimagination of Elizabethan sport, derived from passages from Shakespeare. Though a legal writer and prominent jurist, being appointed attorney-general of Ireland in 1889, the best known publication of Dodgson Hamilton Madden (1840–1928) remains the Diary of Master William Silence, an unusual composition examining hunting in Elizabethan England by weaving extracts of Shakespeare’s various plays and sonnets into a narrative adorned with a broad array of erudite references, with a substantial section on equestrianism and an essay on ‘the critical significance of Shakespeare’s allusions to field sports’.

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BURROUGHS, William.

The Naked Lunch.

First edition, second printing – the first had a decorative border on the title-page, was priced 1500 francs on the rear cover, and was issued with a dust-jacket (not the earliest copies). After the franc was devalued on 1 January 1960, copies were over-stamped with a new price; and shortly after there was new printing (as here) with the corrected price and no jacket.

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MARKHAM, ‘J.’ [Gervase], G. JEFFERIES, ‘and Experienced INDIANS’, [and C.D. LESHER (editor)].

The Citizen and Countryman’s experienced Farrier, containing: I. the most and best approved Method of Ordering, Dieting, Exercising, Purging, Scowering, and Cleansing of Horses, also choice Restoratives to cheer the Heart, procure an Appetite, and to clear the Lungs and Pipes, so as to strengthen the Wind, and give large Breath to the Running or Race-Horse; II. a certain sure Method to know the true State of any Horse’s Body, as to his Sickness or Health; III. the true Shape of a Horse explained, with choice Directions for Burying; IV. an experienced and approved Method for Raising of Horses, as to Ordering, Keeping, & c., also Mares, Colts, and Stallions; V. a sure and certain Rule to know the Age of any Horse, from one Year to ten, with good Observations as he further advances in Years; VI. the best and experienced Way of Keeping the common Hackney, or Hunting Horse, so as to keep him lively, cheerful, free from Colds, Strains, Windgalls, and gross Humours; VII. an approved Method of Purging, Bleeding, and Feeding Cattle, with choice approved Recipts for the Diseases they are incident to, with Signs to know the Disease, and Directions for the Use of Medicines; to all which is added a valuable and fine Collection of the surest and best Receipts in the known World, for the Cure of all Maladies and Distempers that are incident to Horses, of what Kind soever, with Directions to know what is the Ailment, or Disease.

Undated Chambersburg edition. Among the most popular farriery manuals in America, the Experienced Farrier remained in print almost a century after its first appearance, with this Chambersburg edition following those of Wilmington and Baltimore. Intended, like its predecessors, for the common farmer ‘who is scarcely able to read’, the present edition adds for the first time German names for plants and chemicals for medicines ‘so that you may not be at a loss to obtain the ingredients’ (p. vii).

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