![[Wynne, John Huddlestone (1742-1788)]](https://media.app.artisio.co/media/104cbde6-0d38-43cb-9e0f-bb721ef57bcf/inventory/629e2dd6-fa80-47d8-adc8-1b015de2cacd/d03cb74f-dc0b-4d5d-ac30-6beb7ad518ee/0001_asEusY_original.jpg)
[Wynne, John Huddlestone (1742-1788)]
The Man of Honour: or, the History of Harry Waters, Esq.
£3,276
Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs
Auction: 19 June 2024 from 10:00 BST
Description
London: printed for F. and J. Noble, at their respective circulating libraries, 1771-3. 3 volumes, 12mo (16.6 x 10cm), [2] 242, [2] 212, [4] 199, contemporary speckled sheep, spines ruled in gilt with twin red and green labels, half-title to volume 3 only, a little skinning and rubbing to leather, very occasional light soiling internally, volume 1 with shallow loss to head of spine, old stain to top spine compartment, leaves D3-10 working loose (held by bottom cord), volume 2 with short crack to head of front joint, volume 3 title-page slightly marked (3)
Provenance
Title-pages with ownership inscriptions ‘Margt Horn Elphinstone’ (dated 1792 in the first volume), presumably Margaret Dalrymple-Horn-Elphinstone (c.1765-1849, daughter of General Robert Dalrymple-Horn-Elphinstone (1718-1794) of Logie Elphinstone, Aberdeenshire, and wife of Sir Robert Burnett of Leys, 7th Baronet (1755-1837); subsequently from the library of the late Robert Bogdan (1950-2023), of Boghead of Torries and Dykehead of Avochie, Aberdeenshire, geography master at Charterhouse and sometime chairman of the Scottish Castles Association.
Footnote
First edition, extremely rare, the only known complete copy of this 18th-century triple-decker Bildungsroman, previously thought to be extant solely in the form of a copy of the first volume only at the John D. Rockefeller Colonial Williamsburg Library in Virginia, USA; a German translation was published in 1777 with the title Der Rechtschaffene oder Geschichte des Herrn Heinrich Waters. The author was once thought to have been John Cleland, author of Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, better known to posterity as Fanny Hill, on the basis of a remark in a contemporary obituary of Cleland, but the reference is now understood to be an obvious mistake for Cleland's 1768 work The Woman of Honour, and an issue of the London Chronicle (17-19 October 1771) names the author of The Man of Honour as J. H. Wynne, a hack writer who had spent time in the service of the East India Company.