"TUVILL, DANIEL" "Essaies Politicke, and Morall. By D. T. Gent." "[London:] Printed by H[umphrey] L[ownes] for Mathew Lownes, 1608." First edition "STC 24396; Pforzheimer 1014; NCBEL I, 2408." "Small 8vo, old paneled calf (rebacked), red morocco labels, gilt rules and lettering. Woodcut border title." " ¶ The first edition of one of the earliest collections of essays in English, and the first book by Daniel Tuvill (15??-1640), a well educated and widely read clergyman, who should be “included along with Francis Bacon, William Cornwallis, and Henry Peacham as those who, following the example of Montaigne in France, helped to make the informal essay an important achievement of seventeenth-century English literature” - (Irving Ribner, Yearbook of English Studies, vol. 3, 1973, page 286). ¶ Tuvill's Essays draw from a wide variety of classical sources and contemporary European historians and political theorists - Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Jean Bodin, and Phillippe de Commines, among them. He quotes the Old and New Testaments, proverbs, fables, sermons, and commonplace books in his nine discourses on matters such as opinion, the force of reason, affection, praises, cautions in friendships, accusation, reputation and things prejudicial to secrecy. In 1609 Tuvill published a second collection, Essayes, Morall and Theological (which tend to be less secular); he later published several sermons and discourses; and according to the scholar John Lievsay (who edited the definitive edition of Essays Political and Moral together with Essays Moral and Theological, University of Virginia, 1971), Tuvill contributed three introductory poems to later editions (beginning in 1616) of Thomas Overbury's celebrated poem A Wife Now a Widowe. Though fairly well represented by institutional holdings (OCLC records 17 copies), Tuvill's Essaies are rare in the trade. Only one copy is recorded in the auction records American Book Prices Current in the past 80 years (in 1971), and that one was defective. In years prior to 1925, copies appeared at auction in 1911 (Hoe), 1912, 1919 and 1923. Old ownership stamp of the British Museum on the verso of the title-page." Bound without the preliminary blank and the two terminal blanks; first signature (particularly the title) a little soiled; but overall a very good copy. Price: USD 8,000.00 other currencies   order no. 20863    inquire

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