Eighteenth-Century Highlights of the The Kline/Roethke Collection at Stanford University

This essay first appeared in The East-Central Intelligencer, N.S. 16:3 (September, 2003)

Stanford University Libraries is the grateful beneficiary of the remarkable gift of the collection of John Kenneth Kline, donated to the libraries in 1980 through the generosity of Kline's daughter, Harriet Roethke, and her two children, Gretchen Young and Johanna Kroger. John Kline was a newspaperman trained in the law, who in 1915 became part owner of the Green Bay Press Gazette. An avid collector of English literature, books on international politics, and illustrated books, Kline built his collection almost exclusively from 1920 to 1930; today it stands an indication of what sort of collecting was possible to a person of taste and means in that remarkably rich era of book-collecting. Kline's list of acquisitions records in most cases the source of each purchase and the price paid, a boon to any researcher endeavoring to track prices paid in the '20s for exceptional copies. Holdings in the Romantics are remarkably rich in the Kline/Roethke Collection, but the collection of authors from the long eighteenth century is also splendid.

Kline's titles from the eighteenth century include many of the high spots of British literature. Many of these copies were bound by the finest binders of the nineteenth century, and are lovely (if perhaps too fancy to eighteenth-century tastes); many others are stunning in their original state: uncut, unopened, in original wrappers, or in eighteenth-century calf or sheep.

Jane Austen is well-represented by first editions, all complete with the rare half-titles, of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), Emma (1816), Persuasion (1818), and Northanger Abbey (1818). The collection includes a presentation copy of William Beckford's Vathek (1786), complete with the errata. Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) is here in a lovely first edition, along with The Principal Corrections and Additions to the First Edition of Mr. Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson (1793). Samuel Johnson is represented by several titles, including a first edition of Johnson's first book, his translation of Father Jerome Lobo's journey, published as A Voyage to Abyssinia (1735); the second edition of London: A Poem in Imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal (1738); the first edition of Johnson's effort at playwriting, Irene (1749), a fine, tall copy which includes the half-title and the two pages of advertisements for the publisher Dodsley; and an imposing and rare copy of The Rambler (1750-1752) features the imprint "London: Printed for J. Payne and J. Bouquet, in Pater-noster Row, 1751." This is the first issue, without "Volume First" and "Contents." Other Johnson gems include a first edition (1759) of The Prince of Abissinia (Rasselas), a first edition, first issue of A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775), uncut and in original wrappers, the Dublin 1779-1781 edition in three volumes of The Lives of the British Poets, and an uncut copy of the London 1781 edition of The Lives of the Most Eminent Poets. The collection also contains a first edition of The Works of Richard Owen Cambridge (1803). Boswell was indebted to Cambridge for much Johnson material, and among the fine engravings in this work is one of Dr. Johnson's ghost appearing to Boswell, a picture that pleased Boswell to the extent that he asked to have it engraved.

Frances Burney's Camilla is here in its first edition (1796), uncut, with the dedication to the Queen, the advertisement, and a subscriber's list which includes one Miss J. Austen, Steventon. Other Burney items include first editions of Cecilia (1782), The Wanderer (1814), uncut, in original boards, with all the half titles, and Memoirs of Dr. Burney (1832). The collection includes an impeccably Bluestocking association copy, Elizabeth Carter's copy of the first edition of Charlotte Lennox' The Female Quixote (1752), with Carter's signature and bookplate. Lady Mary Wortley Montague is represented by the first collected edition of her Works (1803). Thomas Tyrwhitt's magnificent scholarly edition of Chaucer (1775-1778) is here, complete with the glossary (a fifth volume), in a lovely Roger Payne binding. The Earl of Chesterfield's Letters to his Son, Philip Stanhope, Esq. ... is included, a first edition (1774), in original calf, boasting the engraved frontispiece in volume 1, the half-titles for each volume, and the rare errata leaf to volume 1 (bound in volume 2). The first edition of Chesterfield's Miscellaneous Works (1778) is here in two volumes quarto. William Cowper's Poems (1782-1785) is present in a remarkably rare state: it includes the preface by John Newton, issued with only a few copies, and has pages 117, 118, 123, and 124 in both the uncanceled and canceled states. An 1808-1810 edition of Cowper's Poems in two volumes features a fore-edge painting of a Cowper residence on each: volume one has Orchard House, Olney; volume two Cowper's house at Weston.

Of Henry Fielding's works, Joseph Andrews (1742), is present in a first issue, with the preface, errata leaf, and four pages of ads at the end; Tom Jones (1749) is likewise here in a first issue, and Jonathan Wild in its first separate publication (1754), with advertisement to the reader, contents, and two pages of advertisements. Amelia (1752) and The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon (1755) are here in first editions, the latter with its half-title. Bluestocking Elizabeth Vesey's copy of Richard Glover's Leonidas, a Poem is present in a fifth edition (1770), featuring an inscription in volume one which reads "The gift of ye author to his friend Mrs Vesey," and on the endpaper of the second volume some notes in Mrs. Vesey's hand.

The collection contains two William Godwin items of interest: An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice ... (1793), a fine copy in two volumes quarto, bound in contemporary mottled calf; and Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798), his moving biographical tribute to his late wife, the mother of Mary Shelley. This little book is complete with the half-title, errata, and two pages of advertisements. Oliver Goldsmith is here in force, with first editions of The Deserted Village (1770), a lovely tall copy of The Life of Richard Nash (1762), with four pages of ads at the end, The Traveller (1765), with the half-title and dedication and two pages of ads for J. Newbery at the end, and a second edition of The Vicar of Wakefield (1766).

Thomas Gray's works include William Cowper's copy of The Poems of Mr. Gray (1775). Cowper's bookplate and signature are here, along with the autograph and stencil-stamp of his cousin, Lady Hesketh, who did so much for Cowper during his difficulties. Other Gray titles include Designs by Mr. R. Bentley for Six Poems by Mr. T. Gray (1753), a first edition in original boards (choice and elegant); Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751), this a fine copy of the rare second edition of Elegy, published the same year as the first, the Jerome Kern copy, with his bookplate, Odes by Mr. Gray (1757), in a first edition, with the half-title, printed at Strawberry Hill for the Dodsleys; and Poems (1768), the first collected edition, with its half-title.

The collection includes James Hurdis' The Village Curate and Other Poems (1810), bound in a lovely full contemporary straight grained morocco, with a fore-edge painting of Cromer, Norfolk, and William Herbert's Helga, a Poem in Seven Cantos .... (1815), a first edition bound in full red contemporary morocco, with a fore-edge painting of Arundel Castle, Sussex; a first edition of The Poems of Walter Savage Landor (1795) graces the collection; Thomas Moore is represented by a first edition of Lalla Rookh (1817), with engravings by Westall from the first illustrated edition inserted and an 1823 Works of Thomas Moore, Comprehending All His Melodies, Ballads, etc. Never before Published without the Accompanying Music. In an edition greatly esteemed by William Lowndes in his Bibliographer's Manual, Thomas Otway's Works (1813) is present in a large paper copy. Thomas Love Peacock's The Misfortunes of Elphin (1829) is here, a first edition in original boards, as is his Rhododaphne, or, The Thessalian Spell (1818).

Four titles by Dr. Johnson's dear friend Hester Lynch Piozzi grace the collection: a first edition, uncut, in original boards of Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson ... (1786); a stunning copy of the first edition, uncut and unopened, in old boards, of Letters to and from the Late Samuel Johnson ... (1788); a first edition, uncut, in original boards, of Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany (1789); and a first edition of Retrospection: A Review of the Most Striking and Important Events ... which the Last Eighteen Hundred Years Have Presented to the View of Mankind (1801), this last with the bookplate of Piozzi's son-in-law, Henry Merrik Hoare.

Samuel Richardson's works include the first Dublin edition of Pamela (1742), uncut and beautiful in its worn eighteenth-century wrappers, and the London 1810 edition in four volumes, a copy featuring fore-edge paintings in each volume. These are not, however, the standard bucolic or architectural scenes so typically portrayed in fore-edge paintings but instead scenes from Pamela. A first edition of Clarissa (1748), and with the eighth volume, Addenda to the History of Clarissa, Comprising Letters and Passages Restored from the Original Manuscript (1751) is another notable Richardson item in the collection, as is The History of Sir Charles Grandison, a first edition (1754) in an original full calf binding.

The redoubtable Sir Walter Scott's works in the collection include The Border Antiquities of England and Scotland ... (1814), a first edition; The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) a first edition large and thick paper copy, extra-illustrated with engravings by Westall and having the bookplate of H.C. Surtees; Marmion in an 1811 edition, a forty-two-volume collection of Scott's tales and novels published in Edinburgh between 1822 and 1827; and a ten-volume Poetical Works (1821). Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) is here in a first edition, with the half-titles present in all three volumes and advertisements at the end, six pages in volume 1 and four pages in volume 2. The collection also boasts a wonderful Shelley manuscript letter to her publisher Ollier, in her hand and signed M.W., enquiring about proposals made concerning the publication of Frankenstein. Shelley's Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830) is also here, in a first edition, original blue boards, entirely uncut, with a leaf of ads at the end of volume 3, this copy with Jerome Kern and Buxton Forman bookplates.

Tobias Smollett is covered thoroughly, with first editions of Roderick Random (1748), Peregrine Pickle (1751), The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom (1753), The Adventures of Launcelot Greaves (1762), The History and Adventures of an Atom, first edition, first issue, with the misprinted date of 1749 (for 1769), and The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker, first issue, with the misprinted date 1671 (for 1771) in volume one. Smollett's Miscellaneous Works (Edinburgh, 1809) is an edition sumptuously illustrated with twenty-six engravings by Thomas Rowlandson and others.

Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy (1760-1767) is here in its nine-volume glory, all first editions, with all the points. For example, volumes 4, 5, 6, and 9 have the half-titles; volume 4 has the engraved full page plate by Ravenet after Hogarth (sometimes seen as the frontispiece to volume 3); volume 3 has the marbled leaf; Sterne's autograph appears in volumes 5, 7, and 9. A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy is likewise represented in a first edition (1768), with half-titles and a subscriber's list. The collection also boasts a first edition of John Hall Stevenson's Yorick's Sentimental Journey, Continued (1769), and a fine 1793 ten-volume edition of Sterne's Works, in contemporary flamed calf.

The Works of James Thomson, with His Last Corrections and Improvements is included among the literary titles in this collection, this three-volume 1803 edition featuring beautiful engraved plates by Metz, Stothard, and Burney. The first five volumes of Horace Walpole's Works (1798), edited by Mary Berry, his literary executrix, are in the collection, as is the two-volume quarto edition of Walpole's Memoirs of the Last Ten Years of the Reign of George II, issued by John Murray (1822).

Although William Wordsworth is usually assigned to the Romantic period, three eighteenth-century editions of Wordsworth are so rare and important that they merit mention here: Descriptive Sketches, in Verse. Taken during a Pedestrian Tour in the Italian, Grison, Swiss, and Savoyard Alps (1793) is a lovely copy of the very rare first edition. The leaves measure ten by eight inches; T. J. Wise in his bibliography stated that he knew of only six copies in existence. The complete original text was never reissued by Wordsworth, portions only appearing in the Poems of 1815 and 1820. The second eighteenth-century Wordsworth rarity is An Evening Walk. An Epistle: in Verse. Addressed to a Young Lady, from the Lakes of the North of England (1793). Wise states that no more than six or seven perfect copies could be recorded at the time of his bibliography. The leaves in this copy measure ten by eight inches as well. As in the case of Descriptive Sketches, An Evening Walk was never reissued in its entirety by Wordsworth; some 400 lines were reprinted for the 1820 edition of Poems, with brief extracts only issued in the 1815 edition. The third eighteenth-century Wordsworth rarity in this collection is the watershed 1798 edition of Lyrical Ballads, which contains the very rare uncanceled leaf G1, with the second line reading: "that 50 years of reason," and the title of the poem beginning on page 98 reading: "Simon Lee, the old Huntsman, with an incident in which he was concerned."

Holdings in dramatic literature include a first edition of Frances Burney's Tragic Dramas, Chiefly Intended for Representation in Private Families ... (1818) and William Davenant's Works (1673), the latter a fine association copy with the signature of Elizabeth Vesey on the title page, and with the bookplate of her nephew, Colonel Vesey. Oliver Goldsmith's The Good-Natur'd man is here in a first edition, with the prologue written by Samuel Johnson, as is Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer (1773), in a first edition, first state, without the character "Diggory" in the Dramatis Personae.

The jewel of the drama collection is the Shakespeare Fourth Folio (1685). This copy features the imprint "London, Printed for H. Herringman, E. Brewster and R. Bentley, at the Anchor in the New Exchange, the Crane in St. Pauls Church-Yard, and in Russell Street, Covent Garden. 1685." It is lavishly bound in crimson levant morocco, extra gilt paneled sides, and gilt edges. The Fourth Folio is complemented by a copy of the 1803 Johnson/Steevens Shakespeare, ("the fifth edition"), revised and augmented by Isaac Reed, in twenty-one volumes bound in contemporary blue morocco. Other dramatic works include Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals (1775), a first edition, first issue with the catchword "Epi" on the final leaf (this copy from the H. Buxton Forman library, with his bookplate) and his School for Scandal, likewise in a first edition, with the errata on page [96], along with the other points that make it exceedingly rare. Beaumont and Fletcher's plays are here in a beautiful ten-volume set, The Dramatick Works of Beaumont and Fletcher, Collated with All Former Editions, and Corrected with Notes, Critical and Explanatory, by Various Commentators. This edition features some fifty-four original engravings; our copy is in a splendid contemporary red morocco.

Among the historical works, an interesting association copy is the 1751 edition of Sir Walter Raleigh's Works, with Elizabeth Vesey's bookplate in each volume. Other titles include Molesworth's translation of Monsieur de Serviez's The Roman Empresses, or, The History of the Lives and Secret Intrigues of the Wives of the Twelve Caesars ... (1752), the first edition of the translation of Chastellux' Travels in North America (1787), and Clarendon's The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, Began in the Year 1641 (1732), profusely illustrated. Dr. Samuel Jebb's Mary, Queen of Scots (1725) is here, with the woodcut frontispiece of Mary, as is Lady Emma Hamilton's Memoirs ... with Illustrative Anecdotes of Horatio, Lord Viscount Nelson and Many Other of Her Friends and Contemporaries, a first edition (1815), extra-illustrated with fifty fine engraved portraits of historical celebrities, and the six-volume Langhorne edition of Plutarch's Lives (1809). The first edition of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776) is present in a beautiful two-volume quarto with the half-titles and bound in contemporary calf. Also present are George the Third, His Court and Family (1821), with eighteen plates, and John Gifford's A History of the Political Life of the Honourable William Pitt (1809). Perhaps the gem of the histories is a first edition of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1778) in six volumes quarto, bound in full contemporary calf, a lovely copy of this bibliographically challenging book.

Fine press items of eighteenth-century Britain in the Kline Collection, while not plentiful, include four lovely Baskerville imprints: Milton's Paradise Lost (1759), Addison's Works (1761), Congreve's Works (1761), and Shaftesbury's Characteristicks (1773).

Illustrated books from three centuries form a significant part of the Kline/Roethke collection, and the highlights from the early nineteenth century are among the most important and beautiful in the entire collection. Two especially nice Robert Cruikshank items are here: W. H. Ireland's Life of Napoleon Bonaparte (1828), a first edition with the twenty-four plates by Cruikshank all in exceedingly fine condition, plus three uncolored folding plates, of Marie Louise, the Duc de Reichstadt, and Napoleon's generals; the other remarkable Cruikshank item is C. M. Westmacott's The English Spy: An Original Work, Characteristic, Satirical, and Humorous ... (1825-1826). This copy has seventy-one full-page beautifully colored plates, sixty-seven by Cruikshank, plus thirty-six woodcuts by Cruikshank and Hughes in the text, plus the plate by Cruikshank in volume 1 entitled "The Five Principal Orders of Society." Made up from the twenty-four original parts, this copy has the original wrappers and advertisements bound in. Robert Cruikshank was also the illustrator of Lessons of Thrift (1820) "by a member of the Save-All Club," a first edition featuring twelve humorous hand-colored plates. Robert and George Cruikshank both contributed to Pierce Egan's Life in London, or, The Day and Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorn, Esq. ... (1821), a first edition of a book that spawned many parodies, imitations, and dramatic versions. (Egan's own stage adaptation was performed at Sadler's Wells in 1822.)

A wide range of illustrators is represented throughout the collection, including Dr. Syntax in Paris, or, A Tour in Search of the Grotesque (1820), a first edition with seventeen colored plates in the style of Rowlandson, The Tour of Dr. Prosody, in Search of the Antique and Picturesque, through Scotland, the Hebrides, the Orkney and Shetland Isles (1821) a first edition with twenty plates, The Old English Squire (1821), with twenty-four humorous plates, and Thompson's The Chronicles of London Bridge (1827), with fifty-six text illustrations and extra-illustrated by 150 views of the London bridges, maps, views and portraits. Other illustrated books include Alfred Thornton's Don Juan (1821-1822), a first edition in two volumes with thirty-one colored plates; Frederic Schoberl's Picturesque Tour from Geneva to Milan ... (1820), the first edition, published by Ackermann, with thirty-six colored views engraved from designs of "J and J" [i.e. G. and G., Gabriel, 1763-1840 and Gabriel, 1784-1846] Lory of Neufchatel; and a lovely copy of Alexander Pope's Poetical Works, Odyssey, and Iliad, printed by Bensley for F. J. DuRoveray (1804-1806) with seventy finely engraved plates, a large paper set with brilliant proof impressions of the plates. Also in the collection is A. F. Mignet's History of the French Revolution (1826) a first edition extra-illustrated with 112 plates (mostly portraits) inserted, B. A. Malin's translation of The Adventures of Gil Blas, illustrated with twenty-four engraved plates after Smirke (1809), Charles Johnston's Chrysal, or, The Adventures of a Guinea (1821), "a new edition," with fourteen colored plates, and an 1822 Decameron (London: James Griffin) with eleven plates by Findlay. Don Quixote is represented by the Mary Smirke translation beautifully printed by Bulmer and published in London in 1818. Robert Smirke's plates grace this translation, but the Kline/Roethke copy is extra-illustrated with the suite of twenty-four Thomas McLean plates of 1819, each hand-colored.

Pierce Egan's Life of an Actor (1825) is in the collection, a first edition with twenty-seven plates ("characteristic scenes") by Thomas Lane and woodcuts by Thompson, as is a large-paper copy of Fénelon's Les aventures de Télémaque, fils d'Ulysse (1790 on the title page, but probably issued later), with twenty-four plates en taille-douce designed by Monsieurs Cochin and Moreau le Jeune. There are also Gerning's A Picturesque Tour along the Rhine ... (London: Ackermann, 1820), a first edition, with twenty-four aquatint plates by Sutherland and Havell from the drawings of C. G. Schutz; a London, 1822 edition (printed for Ackermann and others) of Samuel Butler's Hudibras, with twelve colored plates by Clark; and a lovely copy of A Picturesque Tour through the Oberland in the Canton of Berne in Switzerland (London: Ackermann, 1823), being a translation of Voyage pittoresque de l'Oberland bernois, illustrated by Gabriel Lory the Younger with a map and seventeen colored engravings. Two works by Harriette Wilson are included in the collection: Memoirs (1825) a first edition with thirty colored plates, and Paris Lions and London Tigers (1825) the first and only edition (despite the "fifth edition" found on the title page), complete with "Advertisement by the editor," a list of plates, three pages of advertisements at the end, and twelve colored plates.

Thomas Rowlandson (1756-1827) was the most talented of the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British satirists and caricaturists. His illustrations have always been desiderata among collectors, and the Rowlandson items in the Kline/Roethke Collection are among its greatest treasures. Many of the following Rowlandson-illustrated books were published in London by the remarkable Rudolph Ackermann (1764-1834). Ackermann was born in Schneeburg, Saxony, but established himself as a printseller in London in 1795. The most popular method of color illustration in books in the early nineteenth century was aquatint, often in conjunction with hand-coloring (this latter often performed by children). With travel and topography books enjoying a vogue, demand was great and unending for color illustrations; Ackermann would popularize the color print in books more than any other publisher. By the first decade of the nineteenth century, Ackermann was publishing, and by 1817 he had established the first lithographic press in England. Ackermann and Rowlandson proved a very successful partnership, with Ackermann coloring, printing, and publishing Rowlandson's caricatures and scenes.

Rowlandson's work is represented by more than a dozen titles, the highlights including Ackermann's Poetical Magazine (four volumes, 1809-1811), with fifty-two colored plates and featuring the first appearance of Doctor Syntax; The English Dance of Death, from the Designs of Thomas Rowlandson, with Metrical Illustrations (1815-1816), and The Dance of Life (1817), both first editions, with the plates in earliest state. The Life has the rare Ackermann advertisement, signed "R.A.;" The History of Johnny Quae Genus, the Late Foundling of Dr. Syntax (1822), a first edition, with twenty-four colored plates, all three tours of Doctor Syntax (in search of the picturesque, of consolation, and of a wife, respectively), all in first editions with fine impressions of the plates; Sir Charles D'Oyley's Tom Raw, the Griffin: A Burlesque Poem in Twelve Cantos (1828), with twenty-five engravings; Louis Engelbach's Naples and the Campagna Felice (1802), a first edition with sixteen finely colored plates; Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield (1817) with twenty-four humorous hand-colored plates, complete with introduction, advertisement leaf, memoirs, and all the plates dated 1817, in brilliant state; Poetical Sketches of Scarborough (1813), a first edition with twenty-one engravings; The Grand Master, or, Adventures of Qui Hi in Hindostan: A Hudibrastic Poem in Eight Cantos, by "Quiz" (1816), a first edition; Surprising Adventures of the Renowned Baron Munchausen, Containing Singular Travels ... (1809), featuring eight full-page plates; Journal of Sentimental Travels in the Southern Province of France ... (1821), a first edition, with seventeen colored engravings; and Petticoat Loose: A Fragmentary "Tale of a Castle" (1812), a first edition, this copy in original paper covers.

John E. Mustain
Stanford University