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in which Frizzi defended Jewish business activities as a vital economic activity in European countries, placing their success as due to their business acumen and low prices. D’Arco’s tract is now rare, with Library Hub listing only three copies in British institutions, in the British Library and the Cambridge and Leeds University libraries respectively. Octavo (183 × 117 mm). Recent vellum to style, red speckled edges. A few marks to vellum; an excellent copy, contents clean and crisp. ¶ Not in Einaudi, Goldsmiths’, or Kress. £3,500 [129337] 4 BABBAGE, Charles. On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures. London: Charles Knight, 1832 [but 1833] Presentation copy to the industrialist Pascoe Grenfell Third edition, revised and enlarged, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the initial blank, “Pascoe Grenfel [ sic ] Esqre with the Authors Compliments”. Shortly after receipt Grenfell has added underneath, “Given to my dear Daughter Charlotte Maria March 1833 Pascoe Grenfell”. The industrialist and politician Pascoe Grenfell (1761– 1838) made his name alongside his father and uncle as a merchant and dealer in tin and copper ores; the family firm Pascoe Grenfell & Sons remained a major copper producer for most of the 19th century. He served as MP for Great Marlow, Buckinghamshire (1802–20) and MP for Penryn in his native Cornwall (1820–26), associating himself in the Commons with the Grenville party and with the abolitionists. “Recognized as an expert on financial matters Grenfell was instrumental in the introduction of the periodical publication of accounts by the Bank of England, of which he was a vigilant observer. He was also governor of the Royal Exchange Assurance Company and a commissioner of the lieutenancy for London” ( ODNB ).
Charlotte Maria French (1812–1860) was one of Grenfell’s eleven daughters with his second wife Georgiana St Leger. Through her sister Fanny and brother-in-law Charles Kingsley, Charlotte was introduced to the historian James Anthony Froude (1818–1894), whom she married in 1849. “Spirited and with strong intellectual interests, Charlotte had infuriated her brother-in-law Kingsley both by her interest in Catholicism and her fondness for Spinoza . . . her critical annotations on her copy of The Nemesis of Faith [by Froude, published in 1849] suggest that she was far from intellectually docile. [She and her husband] began to write together, and Froude expected in the spring of 1850 that a jointly authored work would shortly appear in print” (Brady, p. 167). Another of Froude’s biographers describes Charlotte as the “most intellectual” of the Grenfell sisters (Markus, p. 50). An elemental work in the eventual development of all computational devices, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures (first and second editions 1832) was Babbage’s most successful lifetime publication. It is considered “a turning point in economic writing and firmly established Babbage as a leading authority of the industrial movement” ( ODNB ). Duodecimo. Original purple moiré silk, rebacked preserving most of the original spine lettered in gilt (priced 6s.), pale pink endpapers. Engraved title page with tissue guard, diagrams and tables in text. With 2 pp. publisher’s advertisements at rear. Ownership inscription of British experimental physicist Patrick Blackett (1897–1974) to front free endpaper verso (“P. M. S. Blackett 1950”); Blackett was a distant relation of Babbage’s wife Georgiana Whitmore. Extremities lightly worn, small tear to cloth along fore edge of rear cover, inner hinges lined, title leaf and guard foxed as often, contents occasionally lightly marked but generally bright and clean, rear free endpaper recto neatly annotated in pencil with page ranges. A very good copy. ¶ Ciaran Brady, James Anthony Froude: An Intellectual Biography of a Victorian Prophet , OUP, 2013; Anthony Hyman, Charles Babbage, Pioneer of the Computer , Princeton UP, 1982; Julia Markus, J. Anthony Froude: The Last Undiscovered Great Victorian , Scribner, 2005. £2,500 [140241]
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Peter Harrington
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