CALLIGRAPHIC

[‘According to Cocker’: Edward Cocker, calligrapher, engraver and arithmetician.] Engraved calligraphic Copy Slip in his customary exquisite style, with text beginning ‘No Instrument of Musicke’.

Author: 
Edward Cocker [Edoardus Coccerius] (1631-1676), English calligrapher, engraver and arithmetician (‘Philomath’), whose name became proverbial because of a work of arithmetic attributed to him
Cocker
Publication details: 
Without date or place. [London, mid-seventeenth century.]
£220.00
Cocker

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. He published two dozen works on calligraphy, and Pepys described him as ‘the famous writing-master’, and employed him to engrave his slide rule, but it is as an arithmetician that he is remembered: two works published shortly after his death, purportedly from his manuscript, gave rise to the expression ‘according to Cocker’. It has not been established which one of Cocker’s works the present item comes from (his earliest, ‘Pen’s Experience’, is lost). In black ink on one side of a 17 x 11 cm piece of laid paper.

[ Edward Marjoribanks, biographer of Sir Edward Marshall Hall. ] Fine piece of calligraphy, on vellum, from the Marshall Hall papers: Marjoribanks's poem on Hall, 'A Great Advocate'

Author: 
Edward Marjoribanks (1900-1932), barrister and Conservative MP, biographer of the distinguished advocate Sir Edward Marshall Hall (1858-1927)
Publication details: 
Place and date not stated. [ London, 1927, 1928 or 1929. ]
£180.00

On one side of a 20 x 15 cm piece of vellum. Main text in black ink. Sonnet titled 'A Great Advocate', with author's name 'Edward Marjoribanks' at foot. From the papers of Sir Edward Marshall Hall, and presumably produced for his widow, possibly by the author. (Hall's widow is said to have claimed that on reading this poem he appeared to her in a vision - the Halls were keen spiritualists - directing that Marjoribanks write his biography. The book was published in 1929.) Title, capitals of octave and sestet, and author's name in red ink. In very good condition.

[Printed book.] Rational Stenography; or, Short-Hand Made Easy, In a few familiar Lessons, founded on the Principles of the late John Byrom, Esq. M.A. F.R.S. With numerous improvements. By the Rev. J. Nightingale.

Author: 
Rev. J. Nightingale, Author of "A Comparative View of Mavor's and Byrom's Systems," and of several Works of History and general Science, &c. [Joseph Nightingale (1775-1824); John Byrom (1692-1763)]
Publication details: 
London: J. Robins and Co. Ivy Lane, Paternoster Row. 1823. [J. Robins and Co. Albion Press, London.]
£150.00

40 + 3 + 4 pp., 12mo. With frontispiece, and three plates on one fold-out strip. In original grey printed wraps (giving the price as 2s 6d). In good condition, on lightly-aged and spotted paper, in worn wraps. Excellent frontispiece portrait, with tissue guard, captioned 'Rev. Joseph Nightingale. | Drawn by Shoosmith - Engraved by R. Roffe. | Published by J. Robins & Co. London. Feby. 1. 1824.' Six-page preface, dated 'Southwark Square, 1823.' Three plates on one fold-out strip, facing p.12.

Calligraphic manuscript titled 'Menander | 345?-293 B.C. | Translations by various hands selected from "From the Greek" edited by T. F. Higham and C. M. Bowra', containing translations by C. M. Bowra, Lord Byron and Gilbert Murray.

Author: 
Anonymous [Sir Maurice Bowra (1869-1947); T. F. Higham [Thomas Farrant Higham] (1890-1975); George Gordon Noel (1788-1824), Lord Byron; Gilbert Murray (1866-1957); Menander]
Publication details: 
Without date and place, but after 1943.
£120.00

7pp., 4to. On three bifoliums and two single leaves of watermarked laid paper, all loose, with the bifoliums placed inside one another and the single leaves inserted after the title. Very good, on lightly-aged paper. Written out in black ink, with the titles in red ink, in an excellent uncial hand. The five translations are 'My Own, my Native Land' and 'The Family Dinner-Party', both by Bowra; 'This World is all a Fleeting Show' and 'This defileth a Man', both by Murray; and 'Whom the Gods love', by Byron.

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