8vo. viii, 168pp. With half-title and five engraved plates. Contemporary blind-stamped, gilt-tooled polished navy calf. Marbled endpapers and edges. Lightly rubbed and marked, small surface loss to head and foot of spine. Bookplate of Liam Sims FSA to FEP. Inked ownership inscription 'Lewis Thorpe, Cambridge, 2 Sept 47' and library stamp of G. A. Judd to verso of FFEP. Internally clean and crisp.

British novelist and poet Helen Maria Williams's (1759-1829) translation of Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's best known novel, the love story Paul et Virginie (Paris, 1788), set in Mauritius. It was neither the first nor a complete translation, but Williams' English abridgement (first published London, 1795) was immediately successful, reprinted 10 times within the British Isles before 1801. The accompanying illustrations for this edition, engraved by Charles Heath after Richard Westall, are dated 1820.