‘MAY DESPOTISM BE FOR EVER ABOLISHED!’
REEVE, Clara.
The Memoirs of Sir Roger de Clarendon, the natural son of Edward Prince of Wales, commonly called the Black Prince; with Anecdotes of many other eminent Persons of the fourteenth Century …
London: Printed for Hookham and Carpenter … 1793.
Three vols, 12mo, pp. I: [iii]-xxiv, 221, [3 (ads for Hookham’s Literary Assembly)], II: [2], 249, [1], III: [2], 217, 217-231; wanting half-titles and the four leaves of terminal ads in vol. III, but a fine crisp copy in contemporary catspaw half calf with marbled sides, gilt green morocco lettering-pieces, yellow edges.
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The Memoirs of Sir Roger de Clarendon, the natural son of Edward Prince of Wales, commonly called the Black Prince; with Anecdotes of many other eminent Persons of the fourteenth Century …
First edition. After several novels with contemporary settings, Reeve returned here to the past, though it is less gothic than her Old English Baron. The historical setting is a foil for a commentary on contemporary post-Revolutionary French politics. Reeve had been an initial support of the Revolution, but like many lost her taste for it during the Terror. Her preface here notes that ‘The new philosophy of the present day avows a levelling principle, and declares that a state of anarchy is more beautiful than that or order and regularity. There is nothing more likely to convince mankind of the errors of these men, than to set before them example of good government, and warnings of the mischievous consequences of their own principles’ – such is Reeve’s intent here.
Hookham’s Literary Assembly, advertised here, was the re-vamped successor of their thirty-year-old subscription library; ‘at very great expence’, Hookham ‘fitted up an elegant suit of apartments for the establishment’, whose patrons included the Prince of Wales. Subscriptions were 2 guineas per annum, though ‘respectable foreigners’, i.e. those fleeing France, could subscribe for half that – these included Madame de Genlis.
Provenance: from the library of Mary Hill (née Sandys, 1764–1836), Marchioness of Downshire and later Baroness Sandys, a wealthy heiress, society hostess, and literary patron who married the young but ill-fortuned politician Arthur Hill in 1786. Raised by her uncle, one of Samuel Johnson’s ‘Streatham worthies’, she became a friend of both the Prince of Wales and Mrs Fitzherbert, and once entertained the Prince for four days at the family seat of Ombersley. She built up a fine collection of contemporary fiction, mostly by women, to add to the family library.
Garside 1793:37; Summers, Gothic Bibliography, p. 411.
