With a letter from a debtor
Memoirs of the first forty-five years of the life of James Lackington, the present bookseller on Chiswell-street, Moorfields…
London: printed and sold by the author, [1791]. First edition, 8vo, pp. xxxii, 344; engraved portrait (slightly offset onto title-p.), woodcut of the branch on p. 285; uncut; contemporary calf-backed marbled boards, spine a little perished and with an early leather repair to the joints; a good, sound copy, with the bookplate of Lee Edmonds Grove. Laid in is a letter addressed to Lackington dated Salisbury, Nov. 16, 1804 from John Malham (1747-1821, miscellaneous writer of arithmetics, navigational texts, and religious stories, among others) who was apparently in arrears with Lackington: "The misfortunes into which I have sometimes fallen in the past have been productive of the most serious evils…at present every resource is totally drained, that I have much difficulty from my own bad health and a young sickly family, to subsist from week to week." He tries to persuade Lackington into accepting "at a fair price…any of my publications, as the Arithmetic or the Sermons. I should wish to balance the account in that way to your satisfaction, - being the only means in my power." Malham goes on optimistically: "I should wish to see your catalogue, to look forward to better days, which yet I hope for." Item #26049
Price: $750.00
