8vo. In five volumes. 372pp; 248pp; 252pp; 216pp; 256pp. With an engraved frontispiece to each volume. Antique-style gilt-tooled tree-calf, contrasting brown morocco lettering- pieces. Slightly rubbed and marked with a little more surface wear to joints and spine. Marbled endpapers. Bookplate of Richard Sinclair Brooke, Wyton Rectory, Huntingdon to FEP of vol. I. Inked ownership inscription to head of title of each volume. Light scattered spotting across text.

A new edition of Irish novelist Henry Brooke's (1703-1783) picaresque and sentimental novel The Fool of Quality. First privately published between 1765 and 1770, the text of this volume is drawn from the 1776 revised edition published by Edward Johnston. Although initially given the cold shoulder by critics, the text gradually received praise for its philosophical allegory in which the protagonist, shunning his aristocratic privilege, examines the Enlightenment ideals of Rousseau, Locke, and the Methodist movement. The extensive dedication, addressed only to Brooke's 'ancient and well- beloved patron, the public', regales in dramatic fashion the author's relationship to criticism, poverty, and literary success. Unfortunately, Brooke continued to struggle to make a living from his work - an early victim of the Licensing Act of 1737, his inability to publish further plays due to the vendetta of Robert Walpole earned him the support of Samuel Johnson, whose first public piece of writing was produced in support of Brooke's creative endeavours.

Provenance: Richard Sinclair Brooke's copy, although no relation - himself a rector, amateur poet, and novelist, his son Stopford Augustus Brooke (1832-1916) became a renowned Irish clergyman and chaplain-in-ordinary to Queen Victoria. A prodigious and popular literary scholar, Stopford Brooke published several guides and primers to the history of English literature, in addition to monographs on, inter alia, Browning, Milton, Tennyson and Shakespeare.