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4to., [viii], 197pp., four finely engraved full-page plates and a fine decorative engraved half-page headpiece to chapter 1 by Abraham Raimbach from pictures by Robert Smirke, preliminary "Advertisement" by Walter Scott,original ribbon marker still present, a few very light occasional spots to title-page, marbled endpapers, bound in good quality contemporary straight-grained morocco, inner gilt decorative floral borders, gilt ruled borders with gilt decorated spine in compartments with raised bands, slightly rubbed on some leading edges. Overall a generally VG+ copy in an attractive binding of this, the finest illustrated edition of this work. [Courtney & Nichol Smith, p.89]. Ex Libris Mathew Wilson with his fine heraldic bookplate to upper pastedown. The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, originally titled The Prince of Abissinia: A Tale, though often abbreviated to Rasselas, is an apologue about happiness by Samuel Johnson. The book's original working title was "The Choice of Life". He wrote the piece in only one week to help pay the costs of his mother's funeral, intending to complete it on 22 January 1759 (the eve of his mother's death). The book was first published in April 1759 in England. Johnson is believed to have received a total of £75 for the copyright. Johnson was influenced by the vogue for exotic locations. He had translated A Voyage to Abyssinia by Jeronimo Lobo in 1735 and used it as the basis for a "philosophical romance". Ten years prior to writing Rasselas he published "The Vanity of Human Wishes" in which he describes the inevitable defeat of worldly ambition. Early readers considered Rasselas to be a work of philosophical and practical importance and critics often remark on the difficulty of classifying it as a novel. Johnson was a staunch opponent of slavery, revered by abolitionists, and Rasselas became a name adopted by emancipated slaves. While the story is thematically similar to Candide both concern young men travelling in the company of honoured teachers, encountering and examining human suffering in an attempt to determine the root of happiness their root concerns are distinctly different. Voltaire was very directly satirising the widely read philosophical work by Gottfried Leibniz, particularly the Theodicee, in which Leibniz asserts that the world, no matter how we may perceive it, is necessarily the "best of all possible worlds". In contrast the question Rasselas confronts most directly is whether or not humanity is essentially capable of attaining happiness. Writing as a devout Christian, Johnson makes through his characters no blanket attacks on the viability of a religious response to this question, as Voltaire does, and while the story is in places light and humorous, it is not a piece of satire, as is Candide. The plot is simple in the extreme. Rasselas, son of the King of Abyssinia (modern-day Ethiopia), is shut up in a beautiful valley, "till the order of succession should call him to the throne". He grows weary of the factitious entertainments of the place, and after much brooding escapes with his sister Nekayah, her attendant Pekuah and his poet-friend Imlac. They are to see the world and search for happiness, but after some sojourn in Egypt, where they encounter various classes of society and undergo a few mild adventures, they perceive the futility of their search and abruptly return to Abyssinia. Seller Inventory # 3701
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