Proposals for Printing a very Curious Discourse, in Two Volumes in Quarto, intitled, Pseudologia Politike [these last two words in Greek]; or, a Treatise of the Art of Political Lying, with An Abstract of the First Volume of the said Treatise.

[ARBUTHNOT, JOHN].

Published by London: Printed for John Morphew, near Stationers-Hall. Price 3d. [1712].

About this Item

22, [2]pp., 12mo. With the half-title and a final leaf of advertisements; single worm-track at the outer lower margin, well clear of text, otherwise a fine, mostly untrimmed copy. Disbound. First edition, a series of brief phantom proposals in the form of an abstract of the first volume of an imaginary book, in which, as the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography puts it, "Arbuthnot s satiric temper reaches its most ingenious expression, ending on an ironical consideration of the spin-doctor s basic problem, `whether a lie is best contradicted by truth or another lie. " The work has been attributed to Jonathan Swift, and is recorded under "doubtful" in Teerink/Scouten, Bibliography of Swift 875; the Swift attribution has been pretty authoritatively dismissed. Uncommon in commerce though well-represented in libraries; the last auction record, at Swann Galleries in 1996, was $375.00.

Seller Inventory # 13445

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Proposals for Printing a very Curious Discourse, in Two Volumes in Quarto, intitled, Pseudologia Politike [these last two words in Greek]; or, a Treatise of the Art of Political Lying, with An Abstract of the First Volume of the said Treatise.
• Publisher: London: Printed for John Morphew, near Stationers-Hall. Price 3d. [1712].
• Edition: 1st Edition