‘GREAT IN ITS LITTLENESS’
[PRAYERS.]
The New-Years-Gift, complete: in six Parts. Composed of Meditations and Prayers for every Day in the Week: with Devotions for the Sacrament, Lent, and other Occasions.
London, Henry Mortlock, 1700.
24mo, pp. [12], 407, [1 (ads)], including the engraved frontispiece (A1); a fine copy in contemporary panelled, speckled sheep, spine chipped at head; ownership inscriptions ‘E. Sandys’ and ‘Sam Sandys his booke’ (see below).
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The New-Years-Gift, complete: in six Parts. Composed of Meditations and Prayers for every Day in the Week: with Devotions for the Sacrament, Lent, and other Occasions.
Unrecorded edition of a very popular collection of prayers and meditations, complete in six parts, bound for the pocket.
‘I present you with this short Treatise; carry it in your hand as a Clock which a great Prince wore in a Ring: It striketh every Hour of the Day, and agreeth with Reason, as true Dials with the Sun. If you read it with Attention, you will find it Great in its Littleness, Rich in its Poverty, and Large in its Brevity …’.
The first edition (the first part only) was first published in Hilary Term 1679/80 (Term Catalogues, I, p. 380), but no copies are known to survive. It was re-printed along with a new second part in Hilary Term 1680/1 (Bodley only in ESTC; see also Quaritch catalogue 1443, item 51). There was a ‘third edition’ in 1683 (BL only), along with, apparently four more new parts (of which only IV and VI survive, in unique copies at Worcester College, Oxford); they were then re-issued together in 1685 (BL only), 1693 (BL only), and 1696 (BL, Bodley, Folger). Reprints continued periodically throughout the eighteenth century. Samuel Johnson had a 1709 edition, which he used heavily and passed to Boswell.
Provenance: from the library at Ombersley Court, seat of the Sandys family, with the ownership inscriptions of Samuel Sandys (likely the MP 1637–1701), and his wife Elizabeth née Pettus (c. 1640–1714).
Not in ESTC, Library Hub, or OCLC.
