£300
12mo, pp. x, 297, [5, ads]. Later half calf, marbled boards, leather bordered with double blind rules, spine divided by raised bands between double gilt rules, black morocco label, other compartments tooled centrally in gilt, edges red. Somewhat soiled, 2cm strip excised from top of title-page removing the word ‘A,’ 5cm tear to one leaf touching text without loss. Some marginal pencil markings, a few more proverbs added to lower margins and a few corrections in ink.
A rare reissue of the first edition sheets with a cancel title-page. The first edition was printed in 1732 as 'Gnomologia: adagies and proverbs, wise sentences and witty sayings, ancient and modern, foreign and British' by B. Baker, C. Bettesworth and C. Hitch (ESTC T138936), whose catalogues are included to the rear of both editions. This reissue is dated to 1732 by ESTC citing a single holding at the Library Company of Philadelphia, (Worldcat adds only Florida, undated) but aside from this book Serjeant is recorded as active as a printer in the BBTI from 1761, often reissuing sheets with cancel title-pages as here. As this would otherwise be an outlier by more than three decades it seems probable that he came upon a number of unsold sheets in the mid-1760s and produced a new title-page for them; and likely that number was small given the 30-year gap and the two recorded copies of this edition in contrast with the 47 with the imprint of Baker, Bettesworth and Hitch in ESTC alone.
