Memoirs of Prince Alexy Haimatoff. Translated from the Original Latin M.S. Under the Immediate Inspection of the King, by John Brown, Esq

London: Printed for T. Hookham, 1825, 1825. First edition, second issue with the title-page a cancel, replacing the original 1813 title-page and preface. Block, The English Novel, page 111; Noted under Garside & Schöwerling 1813:30; OCLC and Copac together record three copies of this second issue (BL, Leeds, and Yale) and six of the first issue (BL, Bodleian, Harvard, NYPL, Texas & Yale). Edges a little worn; some foxing; cancel-title just starting, but sound; very good copy.. 12mo, contemporary brown half cloth, marbled paper boards, gilt decorations. The youthful and rare first novel by friend, comrade, acolyte, and later memorialist of the Romantics, Thomas Jefferson Hogg (1792-1862). Prince Alexy is an animated tale that shows the influence of Ann Radcliffe, William Godwin, William Beckford and Voltaire, among others, in its philosophical, picaresque narrative about the life of a Russian prince, who travels the world seeking truth about love, education and governance. The novel also shows the influence of Shelley, who was very approving of the story in a review published in 1814 in the Critical Review, which became one of his best-known pieces of literary criticism: "[Hogg's] great though indisciplinable energies and fervid rapidity of conception embodies scenes and situations, and of passions affording inexhaustible food for wonder and delight. The interest is deep and irresistible. A moral enchanter seems to have conjured up the shapes of all that is beautiful and strange to suspend the faculties in fascination and astonishment." The relationship between Jefferson Hogg and Shelley, which began when they were students at Oxford, has been well documented.