A Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade; Addressed to the Freeholders and other Inhabitants of Yorkshire
by WILBERFORCE,William
- Used
- very good
- first
- Condition
- Very Good
- Seller
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Norwich, Norfolk, United Kingdom
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About This Item
Octavo, 23.0 x 15.0 cm, uncut in the original sheets, stab holes, pp.(2) +396 + (4), printing flaw on page 276 affecting part of the text on 11 lines, publishers adverts dated December 1806, advert leaves browned, an excellent copy, a remarkable survival in the original sheets, uncut and never bound, preserved in a green cloth box.
Printing & the Mind of Man, 232b. Sabin 103953.
FIRST EDITION of William Wilberforce's book of 80,000 words which he completed on the evening of 27th January 1807 and published four days later. It summed up his arguments against the slave trade which he had presented over the previous twenty years. Copies were rushed to the House of Lords as soon as it came off the presses to coincide with the debate and 2nd reading of the Abolition Act that was to take place in the first week of February 1807. The Lords carried the Abolition Bill by 100 votes to 34, and the triumph was repeated in the House of Commons on 23rd February – 283 votes to 16.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Hamish Riley-Smith Rare Books (GB)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- biblio89
- Title
- A Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade; Addressed to the Freeholders and other Inhabitants of Yorkshire
- Author
- WILBERFORCE,William
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- Uncut in the original sheets
- Publisher
- Luke Hansard & Sons for T.Cadell and W.Davies and J.Hatchard
- Place of Publication
- London
- Date Published
- 1807
- Keywords
- slavery PMM
Terms of Sale
Hamish Riley-Smith Rare Books
About the Seller
Hamish Riley-Smith Rare Books
About Hamish Riley-Smith Rare Books
Rare book specialist Hamish Riley-Smith, who died on August 10, did not originally intend to become a dealer.
He went to Trinity College Dublin, where he read economics and met our mother Brigitta (Gita) von Wagner. He planned to work in the family brewing business, John Smith's, and spent seven years learning the craft at Whitbread's. But after all the family interest in John Smith's was sold in 1972, he looked for a new career.
In 1974 he started Hamish Riley-Smith Rare Books. He had no formal training in the book business, other than an acute awareness of business and a degree in economics. He started, in his own words, as a runner, taking one book to another dealer and making a small margin.
Hamish quickly realised this was not for him and started to focus on Arabic and economic books and the social sciences. Through knowledge and research he built up a strong and friendly working relationship with the Japanese, travelling to Japan often. He also traded in Arabia, the US and Europe.
Sacks of catalogues
We can remember how sacks of catalogues would leave the house and go off to museums and institutions across the world, and answers would come back via telex. This was a world before the internet, mobile phones and faxes and computers were only just coming in.
Among his proudest sales were the 14th century Qur'an manuscript of Mameluk Sultan Al Malik Al Nasir Muhammad (pictured here); The Papers of Sir Roy Harrod; The library of Sir John Hicks; The Betjeman Library; typescript/manuscript of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractus Logico Philosophicus; The Felibriges Library of Musée Theodore Aubanel, Avignon; as well as collections of Isaac Newton; John Locke; Thomas Hobbes; Shakespeare; William Petty; Robert Owen and Adam Smith.
He was resolute in his independence and had many friends and colleagues in the book business, but he never did a book fair ("I am not a book fairy") and refused to join any trade associations.
He will be remembered by the family as a loving husband, father and grandfather, and a great source of fun and interest; for Hamish, above all, family came first. His business will continue to be run by his wife Gita and two sons, Damian, director of Paragraph Publishing, and Crispian, director of Crispian Riley-Smith Fine Arts Ltd.
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