Certain Letters of James Howell: Selected from the Familiar Letters as First Published Between 1645 & 1655

No Dust Jacket, As Issured. xi, 85 pp, list of 5 b&w illustrations, Introduction; The Selected Letters. Reprint Edition Limited to 1000 copies. "James Howell (c. 1594-1666) was a 17th-century Anglo-Welsh historian and writer who is in many ways a representative figure of his age. The son of a Welsh clergyman, he was for much of his life in the shadow of his elder brother Thomas Howell, who became Lord Bishop of Bristol. On the eve of the English Civil War, he finally gained a secretaryship of the Privy Council, which according to one eminent critic, was 'very close to the type of appointment that he had sought for 20 years'. The conflict meant that he never took up the position, and at about the same time, he wrote his first book, or 'maiden Fancy', Dodona's Grove, which represented the history of England and Europe through the allegorical framework of a typology of trees. It is worth noting that he started to publish at this time of ferment although he was already well established as a writer of what we would know today as 'newsletters' but were then known as 'tracts' or 'pamphlets'. He was the first writer to earn his living solely from writing in the English language. He was also the first writer of an epistolary novel, a novel of letters, in English ("Familiar Letters"). His 'Lexicon Tetragloton, was not a dictionary in four languages, as its name would suggest, but in six; a dictionary of Latin vernacular (Romance language) proverbs. It is a highly respected work in the Portuguese and Spanish languages as well, quite apart from his native Welsh. He was a prolific writer. His 'New English Grammar' is also considered, by modern historians of formal English, as a work of foreign language teaching and as the first work of its kind in the English language." Lacking slipcase. Pristine, no wear. Clean, tight and strong binding with no underlining, highlighting or marginalia. Brown three-quarter cloth with light-brown paper-covered board lettering and red decorative borders. Size: Large 8vo.…