The Prettiest Book for Children; being the History of the Enchanted Castle; Situated in one of the Fortunate Isles, and governed by the Giant Instruction. Written for the Entertainment of Little Masters and Misses by Don Stephano Bunyano, Under-Secretary to the aforesaid Giant.

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122, [6]pp., 32mo (4 x 3 inches). Woodcut frontispiece and illustrations, some full-page, with a six-page "catalogue" of "Books printed for E. Newbery." An unusually nice copy in contemporary, or very slightly later, half green roan over marbled boards, spine gilt-ruled but unlettered; extremities very slightly rubbed. An early edition from a series which began circa 1770, and proved so popular that many have either vanished or are known in single copies. Alderson and Oyens, Be Merry and Wise, note that the first half of the book, "an instructional tour of the Giant s Castle - has many of the marks of [John Newbery s] style of presentation." The second half is a "jumble of moral padding," but not without interest. Chapter VI onwards is presented as a dialogue between ladies and schoolgirls. It includes a discussion of Theseus and Ariadne: . . . when Theseus set out on his return to Athens, Ariadne accompanied him, but he soon despised her, my dears, (for that is the natural consequence of a young lady s going off with a man in such a manner). One of the schoolgirls objects to Theseus s "leaving this poor princess so, who had just saved his life." Very true, my dear, but if he had not left her in that manner, he must have married her; and no one chooses to marry a young woman that runs after the men. . . . Roscoe, John Newbery, J48, noting three or four variants which could describe this copy. ESTC records some of the variants as well (see N38937-38940). These four variants in ESTC are found in three locations: the Morgan Library (see Be Merry and Wise 115), the Osborne Collection, p. 865, and the Peabody Essex Museum. OCLC and JISC/COPAC locate single copies of other variants at the Bodleian, Victoria and Albert, and Princeton. Seller Inventory # 13609

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