£1,495.00
[Anonymous]. The Genealogy of the Stewarts Refuted: In a Letter to Andrew Stuart, Esq. M.P. Edinburgh: printed for Bell & Bradfute and G. G. & J. Robinson, 1799. First edition.
Bound with:
Stuart (Andrew). Supplement to the Genealogical History of the Stewarts, with Corrections and Additions. London: printed for T. Cadell Jun. and W. Davies, 1799. First edition.
Two closely related works bound together in contemporary calf, the boards framed with an elegant gilt Greek-key border, spine gilt in compartments and lettered Genealogy of the Stewarts Refuted. Bookplate of George Harrison to the front pastedown.
Of particular interest are four pages of manuscript comprising two autograph copied letters, signed by the eminent Scottish intellectuals Hugh Blair (1718–1800) and William Robertson (1721–1793), both dated August 1799 and tipped into the volume. The letters congratulate Stuart on the success of his defence of the Stewart genealogy and provide a remarkable contemporary commentary on the controversy.
Blair’s response is particularly forceful. Having received and read the anonymous Refutation, he describes it as:
“never was there any thing in print more illiberal, petulant, and presumptuous”
and, despite professing not to know the identity of its author, concludes memorably that:
“whoever he might be, he was not a gentleman.”
An unusually compelling association copy of a late eighteenth-century Scottish genealogical controversy, preserving the attack upon Stuart, Stuart’s published response, and contemporary manuscript reactions to the dispute within a single volume.
Author: Anonymous; with Andrew Stuart
Title: The Genealogy of the Stewarts Refuted: In a Letter to Andrew Stuart, Esq. M.P. bound with Supplement to the Genealogical History of the Stewarts, with Corrections and Additions
Year: 1799
Edition: First Editions
Publishers: Bell & Bradfute and G. G. & J. Robinson; T. Cadell Jun. & W. Davies
Place: Edinburgh & London
Format: 4to; two works bound in one
Provenance: George Harrison bookplate
Special Feature: Four pages of contemporary autograph copied letters by Hugh Blair and William Robertson, dated August 1799, tipped in
References: ESTC T100298; T108305
Contemporary calf with gilt Greek-key border to boards, gilt-decorated spine in compartments and gilt lettering. Some rubbing, marking and surface wear consistent with age; extremities and corners lightly worn. Binding remains handsome and presents well.
Bookplate of George Harrison to front pastedown. The Supplement possibly lacking half-title, as noted in the original catalogue description. Internally generally clean and well preserved with occasional minor spotting and age-toning.
Four pages of manuscript comprising two autograph copied letters signed by Hugh Blair and William Robertson, dated August 1799, tipped in.
This is much more than a book about genealogy. It preserves an eighteenth-century intellectual argument almost as it happened.
Andrew Stuart, Scottish lawyer, politician and antiquary, had published his Genealogical History of the Stewarts in 1798, attempting to establish the ancestry and historical seniority of branches of the great House of Stewart, the dynasty which had supplied Scotland—and subsequently Britain—with generations of monarchs.
His conclusions did not go unchallenged.
In 1799, an anonymous opponent published The Genealogy of the Stewarts Refuted, directly attacking Stuart’s scholarship and genealogical claims. Stuart responded in the same year with his Supplement to the Genealogical History of the Stewarts, with Corrections and Additions.
Here, remarkably, the attack and Stuart’s answer have been bound together.
But the volume contains something still more personal.
Tipped into it are manuscript copies of letters from two major figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Hugh Blair and William Robertson, written in August 1799 while the controversy was current.
Blair was one of the celebrated ministers, rhetoricians and literary figures of Enlightenment Edinburgh. Robertson—historian, minister and Principal of the University of Edinburgh—was among the foremost Scottish historians of the eighteenth century.
Their letters transform the volume from a straightforward genealogical publication into documentary evidence of the intellectual network surrounding Stuart and his work.
Blair’s language is wonderfully unrestrained. The anonymous attack was, in his estimation, “illiberal, petulant, and presumptuous,” and its unidentified author, whoever he might have been, “was not a gentleman.”
More than two centuries later, the argument remains preserved between the same covers: accusation, defence and private contemporary reaction.
This volume has several collecting strengths working together.
First are the books themselves: two first editions from 1799, representing opposing sides of a scholarly controversy concerning one of Britain’s most historically important royal dynasties.
Second is the attractive contemporary calf binding, decorated with a gilt Greek-key border and gilt spine. Despite age-related wear, it remains a handsome late-Georgian volume.
Most importantly, however, are the four pages of manuscript letters associated with Hugh Blair and William Robertson.
Their presence gives the volume an immediacy that ordinary copies of either printed work simply do not possess. The reader encounters not merely the published dispute but contemporary private responses from two important names associated with the Scottish Enlightenment.
For collectors of Scottish history, the House of Stewart, royal genealogy, Georgian Britain, manuscript material or the Scottish Enlightenment, this is a particularly appealing association volume.
