The Hermit: Or, the Unparalled Sufferings and Surprising Adventures of Mr. Philip Quarll, an Englishman

[Longueville, Peter]

1727. Westminster. J. Cluer and A. Campbell for T. Warner and B. Creake. 8vo, (190 x 112 mm). Engraved frontispiece and 2 plates. Later tree calf gilt by Riviere, marbled endpapers, edges stained red; upper joint weak. A very fine copy, clean horizontal tear to frontispiece restored, backed with a sheet of laid paper, occasional soiling, repairs to blank margins of G3, L1.

First edition, scarce, ‘an enormously popular work, rivalling Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, of which it is possibly the best imitation’ (Howgego). The tale of a Bristol merchant living on an uninhabited island in the South Seas, in the style of Robinson Crusoe. The frontispiece depicts Philip Quarll with his monkey companion, Beaufidell. The work proved immensely successful and was swiftly translated into French, German and Dutch. Unlike other works of the same nature, here the publisher makes the claim that the story is real, unliely Defoe’s famous Colonel Jack and Moll Flanders. The Hermit borrows heavily for context from Dampier  “For its geographical descriptions The Hermit borrows substantially from William Dampier, and it has been shown by William Bonner in his Captain William Dampier that the island on which Quarll is shipwrecked is identical in its topography to one of the Tres Marias group off the coast of California, located and described by Dampier in his Voyages” (Howgego). 

 

Provenance: monogram bookplate "WV" and motto "Vernon semper viret”; Bernard Gore Brett (bookplate); Walter Ambrose Heath Harding (booklabel); R. David Parsons (booklabel.

 

ESTC T36149.

1727

$5,000.00