Memoirs concerning Herculaneum, the Subterranean City, Late discovered at the Foot of Mount Vesuvius

[Arthenay, Guillaume Marie de.] Fordyce, William (translator and editor). Memoirs concerning Herculaneum, the subterranean city, lately discovered at the foot of Mount Vesuvius . . . 8vo. 4, 68pp. London: Printed for D. Wilson, 1750. 196 x 118 mm. Quarter morocco, marbled boards in period style. First and last leaves a little soiled, minor foxing and toning, but very good.

First Edition in English of d'Arthenay's Mémoire sur la ville souterraine découverte au pied du Mont Vésuve (1748), and one of the first publications in English on Herculaneum. Fordyce, a Scotsman about whom little else is known (he is sometimes confused with another William Fordyce, a Scottish physician), was inspired to make his translation of d'Arthenay's work after visiting Herculaneum in 1749 and "examining the Curiosities they had found there." Fordyce's Memoir, which also includes Xiphilinus's and Pliny's accounts of Vesuvius's eruption, appears to be just the second work in English on Herculaneum, preceded only by Allan Ramsay's translations of letters from the Italian painter Camillo Paderni published in the Philosophical Transactions in 1740. Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland, vol. 2: Enlightenment and Expansion (2011). Gordon, "Subverting the secret of Herculaneum: Archaeological espionage in the Kingdom of Naples," in Coates and Seydl, eds., Antiquity Recovered: The Legacy of Pompeii and Herculaneum (2007), pp. 37-57.