DECLINE AND FALL CONFRONTED AND CONTINUED

The history of modern Europe. With an account of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, and a view of the progress of society, from the fifth to the eighteenth century. In a series of letters from a nobleman to his son.

London, Robinson, Robson, Walter and Sewell, 1779.

2 vols, 8vo, pp. iv, 616; [4], 606, [2]; a very good copy in contemporary calf, raised bands, red morocco labels to spines, front boards detached; a nice family copy, ownership inscriptions of William Stawell in 1782, with a five-line poetic inscription in his hand, and of George Stawell in 1882.

£1600

Approximately:
US $2019€1872

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The history of modern Europe. With an account of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, and a view of the progress of society, from the fifth to the eighteenth century. In a series of letters from a nobleman to his son.

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Extremely rare first appearance of an ‘Enlightened history’. This first edition was published in the same year as a Dublin imprint. Two further volumes were issued in 1784, and the whole work issued as a five-volume set in 1786.

This is a direct response to and continuation of Gibbons’ Decline and Fall, which appeared three years prior to this work, opposing Roman tyranny with medieval feudalism: ‘with all its imperfections, and the disorders to which it gave birth, [the feudal system] was by no means so debasing to humanity, as the uniform pressure of roman despotism’. The apotheosis of the late seventeenth century in this history is the advancement of (English) science and philosophy, which brings in the ease and luxury of the approaching eighteenth century, and therefore the usual warnings against effeminacy. Despite being neither a nobleman or a father at the time of this publication, Russell determinedly inhabits the Chesterfieldian tradition.

All early editions are rare. ESTC lists only two copies of the first edition in North America, at the Newberry and Chicago, and only a single copy of the Dublin edition of the same year, at Wisconsin-Madison.

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