Letters written by eminent persons in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; to which are added, Hearne's journeys to reading, and to Whaddon Hall . . . and lives of eminent men. The whole now first published from the originals in the Bodleian Library and Ashmolean Museum, with biographical and literary illustrations

London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1813. FIRST EDITION. Frontispiece portrait cut out and pasted onto a blank leaf opposite the title in Volume I. Contemporary (original?) calf-backed boards, spine labels; other than some minor spotting on the first few leaves in each volume, an excellent uncut copy from the libraries of William Greenwood and Dr. Herbert Silvette with their bookplates and Greenwood’s signature on the title to Volume I dated 1873. First edition of this collection of over 150 letters, most “from the collections of Hearne, Smith, and Ballard in the Bodleian Library. In addition to many curious anecdotes and remarks of a local nature ... they exhibit biographical sketches of persons contemporary with the writers, as well as notices of passing events, and of the general state of literature. The two journeys of Hearne are printed from his manuscript diaries in the Bodleian Library” (from the Advertisement). The second part of the second volume contains the first printing of John Aubrey’s Lives of eminent men; his detailed biographical sketches of many iconic personalities from the 16th and 17th centuries provided a significant source of personal information for future writers and historians.