1743 Foundling Hospital for Wit - Numbers I & II, Timothy Silence 1st Edition

The Foundling Hospital for Wit. Intended for the Reception and Preservation of such Brats of Wit and Humour, Whose Parents chuse to Drop them. Containing All the Satires, Odes, Ballads, Epigrams &c. That have been wrote since the Change of the Ministry, many of which have never been Printed. Number I to be continued Occasionally. Printed for G. Lion near Ludgate, London, 1743, First Edition. 70 p (number I) + 60 p (number II). 8 x 5.25, full leather, 8vo. In fair condition. Boards are typically worn with rounded edges, light pitting and scuffing. Hinges worn with light cracking and loss. Six compartment spine typically scuffed with light abrasions. Slightly crushed spine extremes. Clear tape found in both front and rear gutters as a previous repair. Bookplate on front paste down. Text block toned with light foxing. Regular old-hand ink marginalia throughout. Binding intact, hinges cracked. Please see photos. The first number of The Foundling Hospital for Wit hit the streets of London in 1743 (when Alexander Pope s final version of The Dunciad came out) and wound up with its sixth installment in 1749 (the year in which Henry Fielding s Tom Jones championed foundlings). This satirical miscellany was a response to the end of Walpole s twenty-two years in power as Britain s first de facto prime minister. The title of this miscellany is a satiric nod to London s first Foundling Hospital which opened its doors to abandoned children in 1741. The Foundling Hospital for Wit took in opposition offspring which no-one else wanted or dared to print. Its mission statement a mock Royal Charter of Apollo and the Muses declared that no more would great Numbers of Mental Infants [be] daily exposed to Destruction. It promised to put an end to the frequent Murders committed on these beautiful Infants by the inhuman Custom of exposing them to perish and starve in the common News Papers, or to be bury d and suffocated in Dunghil[l]s of Trash in the Monthly Magazines (Number I. Preface i-ii). The Foundling Hospital for Wit was ushered in by its pseudonymous editor Samuel Silence who changed to Timothy Silence for the remaining numbers. The attribution to Hanbury Williams (1708 - 1759) apparently derives from an anonymous notation in the British Library copy of the 1763 reprint of The Foundling Hospital for Wit. If we can t say for certain that Hanbury Williams was the editor, we do know that he was one of its most frequent contributors. Webb reprinted three of the Foundling numbers in 1763 and 1764 which evidently made an impression on John Almon who launched a six-volume series, The New Foundling Hospital for Wit, in 1768 which ran until 1773. FIRST EDITION OF NUMBERS I & II! The marginalia seems to "fill in" the names & figures referred to. RAREB1743BOPG - 08/21 RAREB1743BPOG - 09/24 - HKREV38.…