First edition of a volume of essays by the author of The City of Dreadful Night. Most are probably reprinted from the National Reformer, the Secularist, or Cope’s Tobacco Plant, to which ‘the laureate of pessimism’ was a regular contributor.

You may also be interested in...

ON UGLY ARCHITECTURE LEWIS, Wyndham.

The Caliph’s Design. Architects! Where is your Vortex?

First edition, a pamphlet of art criticism, particularly an attack on ugly modern architecture; there is (rare) praise for Cézanne and Picasso.

Read more

[PATCH, Richard, defendant.]

The Trial of Richard Patch, for the wilful Murder of Mr. Isaac Blight, on the 23d of Sept. 1805, at Rotherhithe, in the County of Surr[e]y ... taken in Shorthand by Blanchard and Ramsey ...

First edition of this report of a famous trial (there was a rival version from the shorthand of Joseph and W. B. Gurney). Richard Patch (1770?-1806) was an unsuccessful farmer near Exeter who mortgaged his farms in 1803 and departed to London, where he entered the service of Isaac Blight, a ship-breaker in Rotherhithe. When Blight’s financial circumstances became embarrassed he conveyed his property to Patch to protect himself from his creditors and they entered into a partnership agreement. Patch was to pay £1250 for his share of the partnership, £250 from the sale of his farms and a further £1000 by 23 September 1805, a sum that he knew he had no means to obtain.

Read more