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2 volumes. Very Scarce First Edition. With provenance of the Newberry Library, officially withdrawn, and earlier, of Gustavia A. Senff, millionairess and wife of Charles H. Senff of the famed Senff Collection, including paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens, Franz Hals, Velazquez, Corot, Clays, and Hobbema, etc. With the terminal advertisements in both volumes as called for. 12mo, very handsomely bound during the period in bindings of full speckled calf, the boards framed with double-gilt rules with circular corner-tools, expertly rebacked with gilt hatched raised bands betwixt beautifully gilt tooled compartments, with the original contrasting red and green labels ruled and lettered in gilt, marbled endpapers, and housed in an attractive cloth-covered clamshell box with morocco labels gilt lettered. xix, 1, 306pp, 4 ads; 310pp, 2 ads. A fine and handsome set, the text as clean and fresh as one could hope to find, the antique boards very solid with only a touch of expert restoration and minor wear, the spines beautifully accomplished. FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST FULL NOVEL BY HENRY FIELDING AND VERY EARLY AMONG THE MODERN NOVELS PUBLISHED IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. Fielding called this his "comic epic poem in prose" and it embodies two aesthetics of period literature; being both neoclassical and mock-heroic. Fielding states that the work is an "imitation of the manner of Cervantes", and it does indeed owe much of its humor to Cervantean techniques. But it was Samuel Richardson and the cultural phenomenon caused by Richardson's PAMELA that Fielding had centered in his cross-hairs, within the first few chapters Richardson is parodied mercilessly. Fielding claims in his preface that his impetus for writing the novel was to establish a literary genre "which I do not remember to have been hitherto attempted in our language." He defined this as a "comic epic-poem in prose", being a work of prose fiction, epic in length and varied in chapter; making this a very early example of what we would now call a modern English novel. Thematically, JOSEPH ANDREWS tells of a good-natured footman and his friend and mentor Abraham Adams. Andrews is the brother of Richardson's Pamela. Joseph shares his sister's commitment to premarital chastity and, also like Pamela, has caught the eye of someone, the Lady Booby, intent on seducing it away from him. What follows is a bawdy tale of impending marriages, confused parentage, various twists and turns of social standings, and (of course) true love. First Issue with the following points as called for: Vol. I, p.159.8 "issomething; p. 245.-3 dans for Adams , p. 308 numbered 306; Vol. II p. 241 for 214, p. 14.9 threarned for threatened , p. 57.21 thent hese for than these , p. 93.-3 mead s for meadows , p. 221.2 t of not up one line, p. 235.11 f rom has the unwanted space. Bibliography:: First Edition, "Published 22 Feb. 1742 with a run of 1,500 copies; 2nd Edition. In May and author made hundreds of substantive revisions, some of them a page or more in length." see Studies in Biblio. XVI (1963), 81-117. Seller Inventory # 31733
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