Select Trials for Murders, Robberies, Rapes, Sodomy, Coining, Frauds

London, 1734-1735. Two vols. Complete set. Old Bailey Sessions: Crime, Print, and the Public Imagination in Early Georgian London [Trials]. [Great Britain]. Select Trials for Murders, Robberies, Rapes, Sodomy, Coining, Frauds, And Other Offences: At the Sessions-House in the Old-Bailey. To Which are Added, Genuine Accounts of the Lives, Exploits, Behaviour, Confessions and Dying-Speeches of the Most Eminent Convicts. London: Printed for J. Wilford, 1734-1735. 2 volumes. Complete set. Octavo (7-3/4" x 4-3/4"; 198 x 122 mm), [iv], 479, [9]; [viii], 500 pp. Text in double columns. Contemporary calf, recently and sympathetically rebacked, spines with black morocco labels lettered in gilt. Some light rubbing to boards and wear to corners. Occasional spotting and toning as usual. A very good, sound, and attractive set. $1,250. * First edition. A scarce early Old Bailey compilation, produced for a widening readership eager for accounts of crime, punishment, and notoriety. Though grounded in proceedings of London's central criminal court, these volumes expand the scope of reportage through appended lives, confessions, and "dying speeches," recasting trial records as structured narratives of transgression and retribution. Issued at the height of the so-called "Bloody Code," the collection traces offences-from highway robbery and coining to murder-through conviction to execution, often at Tyburn, and reveals the reciprocal dynamic between court, scaffold, and print. In contrast to the more strictly documentary Proceedings of the Old Bailey, the present work is editorially shaped for narrative continuity and moral exemplarity, aligning it with the emergent market for criminal biography and popular print. A primary source of enduring importance for the study of eighteenth-century English criminal justice and print culture. English Short-Title Catalogue T82604.…