Brown calf binding. Title worn off the spine. Translated from the german of Mr Gessner.

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(Book 1 only, though it is stand alone)

Leather Bound. Condition: Good, full period leather bound. Covers are edgeworn. (please see enclosed photographs). Otherwise, a very good copy of a scarce early edition of this influential classic. ESTC lists only two institutional copies worldwide – one at the British Library, and the other at Duke University Library. An English translation of Solomon Gessner’s ‘Tod Abels,’ or ‘The Death of Abel.’ The translator is not named, but this is believed to be an unauthorized 1770 London printing of a version of Mary Collyer’s much-reprinted 1761 English translation. Reference: ESTC No. T94316. ~KKK~ Gessner (1730 – 1788) was a Swiss painter and poet. Collected editions of Gessner’s works were repeatedly published (2 vols, 1777-1778, finally 2 vols., 1841, both at Zurich). J.L.Lowes notes that Mary Collyer’s translation of the original was as common as Daniel Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’: ‘No book of foreign growth has ever become so popular.’ He goes on to say that ‘Byron read it when he was eight years old, and denied with a little too much emphasis its influence on [his play] ‘Cain.’ The influence is equally clear for Samuel Taylor Coleridge, he maintains: ‘The Wandering Jew and Cain together took possession of the astral body of an ancient Mariner.’ In Lowes, J.L., ‘The Road to Xanadu: A Study in the Ways of the Imagination’ (London: Picador, 1978), pp. 234.