12mo. In four volumes. With an engraved frontispiece and engraved title to each volume. Handsomely bound in contemporary Trinity College, Dublin calf prize binding. gilt supralibros to all boards, contrasting red and green morocco lettering-pieces. Rubbed, some shipping to spines, small wormtracks to joints. Prize plates to all FEPs, inscribed to Ricardo Mauleverer (dated 1799), likely the sometime prebendary of Killenellick, County Limerick.

A revised, Dublin-printed, edition of John Hawkesworth's (bap. 1720, d. 1773) journal, The Adventurer (7th November 1752-9th March 1754), successor to Johnson's Rambler. As he explained retrospectively, his aim was to provide moral guidance for the young, but by indirect means: 'I knew it would be necessary to amuse the imagination while I was approaching the heart' (The Adventurer, no. 140, 2.356). Of about seventy papers written by Hawkesworth himself, the majority were in narrative form: stories of middle-class English life, or oriental tales, a genre in which he was particularly adept; his formula, blending moral sentiment with exotic trappings, magic, and melodrama, proved a popular one. As an essay writer, too, he was considered a rival of Addison and Johnson. His achievements on The Adventurer were rewarded in 1756 by grant of the Lambeth degree of doctor of laws from the archbishop of Canterbury.