Lot 38
[Hunt, Leigh]
The Rebellion of the Beasts
£693
Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs
Auction: 28 September 2022 from 10:00 BST
Description
or, The Ass is Dead! Long Live the Ass!!! By a Late Fellow of St. John's College Cambridge. London: J. & H. L. Hunt, 1825. 8vo (16.4 x 10cm), contemporary half calf, 165 pp., advertisement leaf, 4 wood-engraved plates including frontispiece, pencilled ownership inscription to front free endpaper and p. [iii], variable spotting, some leaves dog-eared, a few other marks
Footnote
Note:
Rare first edition of this anonymous political satire identified as a precursor to Animal Farm and usually attributed to Leigh Hunt. It tells of a Cambridge student, John Sprat, who discovers in Magdalene College library a recipe for a potion which enables him to grant animals the power of speech, resulting in an animal insurrection led by an ass he originally encounters on Parker's Piece. We trace no other copy appearing at auction since one in 1968, realising $67.
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