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12mo. 19th-century quarter brown morocco, gilt, all edges gilt, marbled endpapers. Folding frontispiece to REMINISCENCES (a rural view of Inverness from the river's edge) a little foxed and slightly torn at one fold. A pretty volume, the spine titled "BOND'S MISCELLANIES". The Inverness Herald had a short life, 1836-46, and Charles Bond, formerly a schoolmaster in Hastings, was its last Editor. The reminiscences that he published serially in the weekly Herald are here first gathered in book form. John MacLean (1748-1852), his "Clachnacuddin" (the title-page "Clachnacudin" seems to be a simple misprint), graduated from "a" nonagenarian to "the Inverness Centenarian" and REMINISCENCES "became in the course of a few years", records John Noble in Miscellanea Invernessiana (1902), "rather a scarce book, and when copies appeared in local sales, sold at a good price"; it was reprinted as Reminiscences of a Clachnacuddin Nonagenarian in 1886. Bond's compendium is a bibliographical puzzle. The text of this volume paginates thus: REMINISCENCES (imprint given as Inverness [but Edinburgh/London?]: [printed for Charles Bond], 1842), frontispiece folding plate, pp. [1]-[104], the first page a title-page, the penultimate one a half-title, "MISCELLANEOUS POEMS"; CORONALIS (London: Messrs. Seeley, Fleet Street, and Messrs. Bigg, Parliament Street, [c1840]; no trace of a first edition), frontispiece engraved portrait of Queen Victoria, pp. [1]-22, the first page a title-page, the fourth oddly paginated "iv"; [more MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, no title-page], frontispiece engraved portrait of Prince Albert, pp.3-[22] (Prince Albert facing the opening poem "A Bridal Song", p.3, celebrating the royal marriage in 1840), the last page an advertisement page. It would appear that REMINISCENCES and MISCELLANEOUS POEMS were printed together, and CORONALIS inserted, rather unfortunately, in the middle. Other copies have four pages of general prelims, including a title-page with the overall title MISCELLANIES IN PROSE AND VERSE and the imprint "Edinburgh/London: Messrs. Blackwood & Sons; Messrs. Bigg, Parliament Street; and J. Smith, Inverness", and five-shilling copies an extra pamphlet at the end, BRITAIN'S DANGER, AND SAFETY. Was REMINISCENCES also issued separately as well? Leakey's of Inverness advertises a first edition of the individual title ("A complete but exceptionally poor copy in all respects, soiled and stained throughout") as "Exceedingly scarce, the first copy we have seen". "When a boy," recalls MacLean, "I knew not only every inhabitant of Inverness, but even their very dogs; then houses were few, new books that made their way so far north, were rarities; and those comparatively modern vehicles of public information, newspapers, were scarce in Scotland . . .". Seller Inventory # 2S100014
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