Recently rebound in brown calf with raised banding, black title plate and gilt title on the spine. Presented in a protective box. Dimensions are for the box.

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The Wisdom of looking Backward, to judge the better of one Side and t’Other by the Speeches, Writings, Actions, and other Matters of Fact on both Sides, for the four Years last past. London, J. Roberts, 1715. A fine copy. First edition, an intriguing retrospective of political (and religious) infighting, anatomizing the pamphlet controversies of the last years of Queen Anne’s reign. The work is printed in two columns, ‘One Side’, ‘And t’Other’, and includes numerous extracts from printed works, as well as private letters, gossip and newspaper columns; despite the apparently even-handed format, the reader is invited to conclude that ‘the One Side [the Tories] … were Agents or Tools in supplanting a good Ministry, abusing a good Queen, and inflaming a rash Clergy’, while ‘t’Other’ side, the Whigs, were ‘for the most Part, a good old Sort of Sober Sensible Men, who were all along for the Honour of the Monarchy, the Peace of the Church, and the true Interest of their Countrey’. Swift makes several appearances, with mention of his Miscellanies (1711), and extracts from A Proposal for correcting, improving, and ascertaining the English Tongue (1712).

White Kennett (10 August 1660 – 19 December 1728) was an English bishop and antiquarian. He was educated at Westminster School and at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, where, while an undergraduate, he published several translations of Latin works, including Erasmus’ In Praise of Folly.

Kennett was vicar of Ambrosden, Oxfordshire from 1685 until 1708. During his incumbency he returned to Oxford as tutor and vice-principal of St Edmund Hall, where he gave considerable impetus to the study of antiquities. George Hickes gave him lessons in Old English. In 1695 he published Parochial Antiquities. In 1700 he became rector of St Botolph’s Aldgate, London, and in 1701 Archdeacon of Huntingdon.

For a eulogistic sermon on the recently deceased William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Devonshire, Kennett was in 1707 recommended to the deanery of Peterborough. He afterwards joined the Low Church party, strenuously opposed the Sacheverell movement, and in the Bangorian controversy supported with great zeal and considerable bitterness the side of Bishop Hoadly. His intimacy with Charles Trimnell, bishop of Norwich, who was high in favour with George I of Great Britain, secured for him in 1718 the bishopric of Peterborough. He died at Westminster in December 1728. White Kennett Street, near St Botolph, Aldgate, is named after him