Important Sammelband of 13 works by Pope, Swift and contemporaries

London: various, 1733. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Folio - over 12 - 15" tall. POPE, Alexander. I. An Essay on Man. In Epistles to a Friend, Corrected by the Author, Epistles I-IV. London: printed for J. Wilford, [1733]. [7] 8 5-17 [1]; [7], 6-18; [5] 6-20; [5] 2-18, [2] pp. Half titles for Epistles II & III only as called for, adverts leaf bound at end of Epistle IV. First edition, Epistle I in third variant printing (see Rothschild 1615), bound with 11 other works:
II. Of the Use of Riches, and Epistle to the Right Honourable Allen Lord Bathurst. 2nd edition. London: Printed J. Wright for Lawton Gilliver, 1733. 22, [2] pp. including adverts leaf. (Rothschild 1605 for the first edition).
III. An Epistle from Mr. Pope to Dr. Arbuthnot. 1st edition. London: Printed J. Wright for Lawton Gilliver, 1734. [4], 30 (i.e. 20) pp. (Rothschild 1623).
IV. An Epistle to the Right Honourable Richard Lord Vict. Cobham. 1st edition. London: Printed for Lawton Gilliver, 1733. [4], 13 [3] pp. including half-title and adverts leaf. (Rothschild 1611).
V. Of the Characters of Women: An Epistle to a Lady. 1st edition, 1st issue. London: Printed J. Wright for Lawton Gilliver, 1735. [2], 16, [2] pp. including half-title and adverts leaf. (Rothschild 1624).
VI. The First Satire of the Second Book of Horace, Imitated in a Dialogue between Alexander Pope, of VII. Twickenham in Com. Midd. Esq; on the one Part, and his Learned Council on the other. 1st edition. London: Printed by L. G. and sold by A. Dodd, 1733. 19 (1] pp. (Rothschild 1608).
VII. The Sixth Epistle of the First Book of Horace Imitated. 1st edition. London: Printed for L. Gilliver, 1737. [4], 15 [1] pp. Half-title bound after title-leaf. (Rothschild 1638).
VIII. One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Eight. A Dialogue Something like Horace. 1st edition, 1st issue. London: Printed for T. Cooper, [1738]. [4], 10, [2] pp. including half-title and adverts leaf. (Rothschild 1642).
IX. [SWIFT, Jonathan]. On Poetry: A Rapsody. 1st edition. Printed at Dublin, and Re-printed at London, sold by J. Huggonson, 1733. 28 pp. (Foxon S888; Hayward 153; Rogers 869; Rothschild 2147; Teerink 741; Williams 639).
X. [HARTE, Walter]. An Essay on Reason. 1st edition. London: Printed by J. Wright for Lawton Gilliver, 1735. [4], 30, [2] pp. including adverts leaf. (Griffith 359).
XI. [BRAMSTON, James]. The Man of Taste. Occasion'd by an Epistle of Mr. Pope's on that Subject. By the Author of the Art of Politicks. 1st edition. London: Printed by J. Wright for Lawton Gilliver, 1733. 19 [1] pp. including engraved frontispiece to verso of half-title.
XII. [HASLEDINE, William]. Bellus Homo et Academicus. Recitarunt in Theatro Sheldoniano apud Comitia Oxoniensia MDCCXXXIII... London: J. Willford, 1733. 16 pp.
Folio (347 x 220 mm). Contemporary plain vellum, spine titled in ink (boards little soiled and crooked). Some occasional light soiling and toning to text, a few tears not affecting text, few leaves with paper cracking at gutter (but no signs of wetting or paper mould), previous owner signatures, manuscript list to first flyleaf,occasional pencil annotation and markings in text, work IX with chipping of fore-margin and torn lower blank edge. Provenance: Robert Needham Cust and Robert Henry Hobart Cust (armorial bookplates to front pastedown). A fine copy. ----

I. Rothschild 1615; Foxon P822; Griffith 294; Hayward 148. - The four epistles of the Essay on Man were published successively on 20 February, 29 March, 8 May 1733, and 24 January 1734. They were published anonymously and undated as the author was wary of the negative and hostile perception of him and his previous works that existed in some quarters, and wanted the work to be considered without prejudice on its own merits. The first editions of the first three Epistles appear in variant states, the priority of which is not always clear, but none of which are of textual significance - apart from Griffith's issue I of Epistle I, which Pope revised. The friend to whom the epistles were addressed was Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke. But this is not to say that the poem was simply a vehicle for Bolingbroke's deistical philosophy. Maynard Mack has aptly termed the Essay on Man a public, social and classical poem (Works, III, London, 1950, introduction, p. 74), one that accepts the vastness and impersonality of Newton's universe, but one which, in its shaping of the familiar, also interweaves a tissue of images from older and more human conceptions. 18th-century sociability and a Roman Catholic sense of corporateness are a key part of Pope's philosophical outlook, while his favoured metaphor of concord from discord can be traced back to Heraclitus. In Mack's view, the poem is able to transcend its origins and establish contact with the collective religious and moral past. Between Paradise Lost and The Prelude, there is no other English poem of which this can be said. (Mack, p.72).