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FIRST EDITION. 2 volumes. 8vo, 213 x 123 mms., pp. xx, 516; [viii], 528 [529 - 567, 568 blank], including half-title in volume 1, contemporary mottled calf, gilt spines, green morocco numbering labels; fragments of title labels, joints very slightly cracked but quite firm, corners worn, but a very good set, with G. E. Fussell's autograph on the verso of the front free end-paper in volume, below a contemporary inscription, "Henry Christopher Wise his Book/ with Profit improving, therein may be had/ Monday May 19th 1777." William Ellis (c. 1700 - 1758) wrote a number of books on agriculture, the value of which was sometimes disputed by farmers. The present work is an abridgment of an eight-volume The Modern Husbandman, published in instalments and finished by 1744, though some of Ellis's other works are referenced in the abridgment. In her ODNB entry on Ellis, Anne Pimlott Baker comments, "Ellis's Husbandry Abridged and Methodized, a compendium of all his works on agriculture, appeared in 1772 in two volumes, and the editor defended Ellis, claiming that many of his observations were valuable." A similar observation was made when the book was reviewed in The Monthly Review in 1772, with the reviewer describing Ellis as a "rough diamond" and his various work son agriculture forming a "rude, indigested heap." He concludes favourably, "[W]e shall readily acknowledge that we think the public is obliged to [the Editor] for what he has done; as the sterling sense of this writer, which lay scattered through so enormous a mass of dross, was certainly worth the extracting. We could have wished that The Editor. had done something more than merely drawing his pen through the superfluous passages; that he had not been so very sparing of his notes; that he had attended more to the accuracy of his Author's language." George E. Fussell (1889 - 1990), whose copy this was, alludes to the book on page 6 of More Old English Farming Books., 1731 to 1793 (1950). Seller Inventory # 8250
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