Description

ORIGINAL ENGLISH EDITION illustrated with 8 engravings by George Cruikshank including the frontispiece.
Typical misprints of the third edition: on the title page "Cruickshank" instead of Cruikshank; and on page [ix] "aukwardness" for "awkwardness". A few copies are known of a very early edition dated 1823.
This translation of Chamisso's famous short story, Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte, is by Sir John Bowring. The publisher mistakenly attributes authorship of the story to La Motte Fouqué, who was the German publisher of Chamisso's work.

THE EXEMPLAIRE OF LADY VIRGINIA MURRAY (1771-1841), whose white endpaper bears her handwritten bookplate. The youngest daughter of John Murray, the last colonial governor of the state of Virginia, Virginia was only 18 months old when, in 1775, her father, at the centre of tensions between colonists and black slaves, retreated to New York. This did not stop her, years later, from claiming a pension from the state of her birth: Lady Murray claimed that she had in fact been baptised as a goddaughter of the state of Virginia, and added that she had been promised a sum of £100,000 which would be paid to her when she came of age. Her claim, unique in the country's history, led her to approach Thomas Jefferson; the existence of a contract, however, could not be proven.

An issue of the "Literary Speculum" (n°4- Vol. I - February 1822) has been bound in. This weekly journal appeared from 1821 to 1823, and is best known for having published three columns by Lord Byron.
It includes this autograph signed letter to her niece:

"To Lucy Drew from V.M"

When Lady Susan Murray married for the third time, she entrusted her sister, Lady Virginia Murray, with her daughters Lucy and Georgina.

Ex-libris of Sir Alexander Chermside (1787-1860) on the upper flyleaf: War surgeon (he served notably during the Battle of Waterloo) then Doctor of Medicine, he settled in Paris where he became the physician to the British Embassy.
Lacks a strip at the top of the title page (probably another consignment).