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iv, [1] & 300; 2 p.l. & 317 pages; Publisher's ribbed brown cloth, spines lettered in gilt, and with decorative designs impressed in blind on the spines and front covers, pale yellow endpapers. Two leaves of publisher's ads dated December 1849 bound in between the front paste-down endpaper and the front free endpaper of volume I. An excellent copy, with lustre to the cloth, crisp corners, and just a touch of wear and chipping at the spine ends. There are paper flaws leading to a defect to the fore-edge margins of four leaves in the second volume (none affects the text) -- but, generally, this is an excellent set. The author, Henry Giles [1809-1882] was born in County Wexford, Ireland into a Roman Catholic family. Before he was thirty, Giles had become a Unitarian, and spent three years preaching in the Chapel of Toxteth Park, Liverpool, England. He moved to the United States in 1840 and became widely known as an eloquent lecturer. Most the the pieces in these two volumes were written to be delivered as public lectures, but a few were written for literary or religious journals. There were literary subjects (two lectures on Byron, Oliver Goldsmith, Thomas Chatterton and Carlyle), two significant lectures on Irish history, including fresh observations on the events and troubles of 1848. Giles also deals with political liberty, economics, and includes a most interesting set of his observations on a large mill in Springfield, Massachusetts, and the contrast with the even larger mills which had transformed industrial England. Giles notes that the Massachusetts mill was cleaner than its English counterparts, and that, while the English mills were largely run by child laborers, the Springfield mill had comparatively few children working -- but many more women. Giles thought these New England young women were generally educated, and worked a few years, intending to return to their home towns in order to marry, with the aid of some saved wages from their time in the mill. Giles also had a chance, but most welcome encounter in his hotel with the great American ornithologist and artist John James Audubon - and his account of the great man is interesting. (Giles mentioned that Audubon told him that he had lost twenty-five thousand dollars on his folio publication of the Birds of America, but had hopes of recovering some of this by sales of a forthcoming octavo edition.) Giles had deformity of the spine and something of the appearance of a hunchback -- which he attributed to a nurse having failed to stop him from taking a serious fall as an infant. He married Louise Lord, of Bucksport, Maine, and they had three children. Giles career as a travelling lecturer came to an abrupt end when he was stricken in 1865 by a paralytic stroke while delivering a lecture in Boston. He lived for another seventeen years -- reading widely, writing, and, reportedly drinking. In youth, Giles was said to find the taste of alcohol unpleasant, but it had been prescribed as a means of dealing with pain in his back and spine, and Giles is reported to have become an alcoholic. N° de réf. du vendeur 40859
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