Downman M D (3 results)

Full-Leather. Condition: Fair. Volume one leather boards are detached and the spine is missing. Volume two front leather board detached, back board and spine missing and front marble end page, previous owners old name label on front inside board. Both volumes have gilt side page edges and previous owners initials on the title page. Suitable for re-binding. First and only edition, edited by the Cornish poet Richard Polwhele, but sponsored and published by a literary society in Exeter - and largely written by them. Polwhele's preface gives a good deal of information about the contributors, who include Samuel Badcock, John Bamfylde, Hugh Downman, Edward Drewe and Stephen Weston - as well as Polwhele himself. The only named female contributor is 'Miss Hunt', the daughter of Dr Rowland Hunt of Stoke Doyle, Northants, who wrote an elegy on Dunkeswell Abbey (a little north of Honiton). This is Mary Hunt (1764-1834), who is said to have been a friend of the Bowdler family, and to have taught Princess Charlotte (d. 1817). She spent the latter part of her life at Exeter and is buried at the Cathedral there.

hardcover. Condition: Fair. Sixth Edition; Exeter, 1803; Red paper covers with three quarter burgundy leather binding; no jacket; covers are heavily worn, to boards at edges and spine is torn with top half missing, library label pasted to front board; Ex library with typical stamps and markings; interior pages are mildly toned, otherwise clean and unmarked; pages are also uncut at edges, page size is not consistent; front hinge is cracked, end papers are spotted and soiled, to title page at front; black and white frontis with protective tissue at title page; First section of "6 books" is 183 pages, followed by "Poems on Different Occasions", which is another 35 pages; 8vo - over 7 3/4" - 9 3/4" Tall; 223 total pages.

8vo, pp. 106; engraved portrait frontispiece by Downman after H. Landseer; original yellow paper-covered boards, cream paper shelfback; spine with cracks, edges rubbed, light foxing on the prelims and terminals, text clean and unopened; good and sound, or better. With the oval bookseller's ticket of: "La Libraireie Francaise et Etrangere de Galignani, Rue Vivienne No. 47. Abonnement de lecture en toutes sortes de langues." Presentation copy from the author, inscribed on the title page: "Hon. T. S. Tucker Esq. / from his friend / H. Downman." The titular Thespia was Downman's wife, Frances, with whom he had a long, happy marriage, and whose image graces the frontispiece portrait. Other poems were dedicated to friends within his medical and literary circles. The book was first published in Exeter in 1781. He is best remembered for his poem on the care of infants in which he stressed the importance of breast feeding and proper examination. This edition located at Newberry, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Washington U and UC Davis in OCLC.