Rush Light, First Edition (3 results)

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. First Edition. 1st printing, 1918. Original brown paper covered boards with cloth spine; lettered in gilt on front and spine; 218pp. Collection of light fantasy tales. Scarce. Many of the pages were uncut and a few have bene roughly separated so there are some tears to page edges; corners show wear and there's a couple of minor, pale smudges to cloth, and there's minor dealer's marks in pencil on ffep. But no stickers, stamps, etc. Book is otherwise solid. Many pages remain uncut. Book.

Octavo, pp. [1-6] [1-2] 3-218, original tan boards with brown cloth shelf back, front and spine panels stamped in gold. First edition. Fifteen stories. First of the author's five collections. Delicate, wistful fables (for adults) featuring anthropomorphic animals and objects. Not in Bleiler (1948; 1978) or Reginald (1979; 1992). Smith, American Fiction, 1901-1925 C-299. Boards rubbed at edges, a bright, clean, very good copy. (#115568).

[COBBETT, William]. The Rush-Light.by Peter Porcupine. New York: William Cobbett, [1800]. Five parts, complete. 1st ed. 8vo. Continuously paginated. [2], 45, [2], 47-112, [2 (advts.)], 161-208, [2]; 113-160; 209-258, [2] pp. Removed from various volumes. Parts 1, 2, & 4 were removed from a single volume and remain joined, hence the pagination; parts 3 and 5 are each removed from different volumes. Trim size is different for all three. Foxed and variously toned. Very good copies in a cloth clamshell. Gaines 51c, 52d, 53c, 54a, 55. Evans 37198. The first five issues of William Cobbett's The Rush-Light, the amazingly scurrilous publication aimed at vilifying Dr. Benjamin Rush. "During the yellow fever of 1797 [Cobbett] so ridiculed the purging and bleeding adopted by Dr. Rush that he incurred another prosecution, which ended in a verdict against him for $5,000." Cobbett then moved to New York and continued his tirade against Rush in The Rush-Light. Included are the issues of Feb. 15, Feb. 28, March 15, March 31, and April 30, 1800. These are the only issues that were printed in America, thereafter having been printed (briefly) in London. The Feb. 15 issue, containing the error of "New Yokk" as the place of publication and various other typographical changes, is noted by Gaines as "a new setting of type throughout," after two previous versions. The Feb. 28 issue is the second variant of a "completely new setting of type." The March 15 issue is a variant with some errors corrected. The March 31 issue is the earliest, and the April 30 issue is the only one noted in Gaines. The next issue of The Rush-Light was not published until Aug. 30, 1800, in London.