August 2020 Catalogue

A u g u s t 2 0 2 0 41 “A Work Of Standard Importance In English Literature” 39. PEPYS, Samuel. Memoirs of Samuel Pepys. London, 1825. Two volumes. Quarto, later three-quarter tan morocco gilt. $5500. Click for more info First edition of Samuel Pepys’ influential and entertaining diary, with engraved frontispiece portrait of Pepys and 13 other engraved plates, handsomely bound. Secretary to the Admiralty during the reigns of Charles II and James II, Pepys began keeping a diary at age 27. “To read Pepys is to be transported immediately into his world… Not all the passages are as picturesque as the famous set pieces in which he describes Charles II’s coronation or the Great Fire of London, but there is not an entry which does not in some degree display the same power of summoning back to life the events it relates” (Robert Latham). “The best book of its kind in the English language” (Allibone II:1557). With both half titles. Infrequent scattered foxing, mild toning to rear panels of handsome morocco bindings. “We to a little ale-house on the Bankside, over against the Three Cranes, and there stayed till it was dark almost, and saw the fire grow…”