The History of Switzerland, from the Conquests of Caesar to the Abdication of Buonparte

Book Description

London: Printed for Harvey and Darton, 1825. viii, 316pp., 12mo. Engraved frontispiece, additional title, and folding map (these a little spotted, frontispiece with a contemporary manuscript description neatly tipped on), one gathering slightly sprung. Original red roan-backed pictorial drab boards. First edition, “presented to young readers,” but “not intended to form one of the earlier steps in the course of their historical studies.” For those the author recommends Maria Hack’s histories of Greece and Rome, and English stories. Authorship of this work, largely an abridgment of a comprehensive history by Joseph Planta, has been ascribed to Thomas Colley Grattan since the days of DNB, an attribution accepted in The Dartons, G397. It is a puzzling attribution, not least because Grattan was living abroad at the time and caught up in other works. In view of another entry in The Dartons, G731A, recording an 1821 payment of £14 by the publishers to Miss Park for “Histy of Switzerland,” the attribution may deserve a second look.

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