FAULKNER'S 1735 EDITION OF SWIFT'S WORKS, THE FIRST COLLECTED EDITION, VERY HANDSOMELY BOUND

[SWIFT, Jonathan]. The Works of J.S., D.D, D.S.P.D. in Four Volumes. Dublin: George Faulkner, 1735. Four volumes. Octavo, contemporary full mottled brown calf, raised bands, red morocco spine labels. $8500.

First collected edition, containing the definitive edition of Gulliver's Travels, with four frontispiece portraits and five engraved maps and plates, very handsomely bound.

The details of how Dublin printer George Faulkner was chosen by Swift to publish his collected works—as opposed to Swift's usual publisher, Benjamin Motte, in London—remain contested, but when Motte challenged the edition and obtained an injunction against selling it in England, Swift verified Faulkner's edition as authorized by him, and continued to work with Faulkner until Swift's death in 1745. Over subsequent editions, the Works expanded, to six volumes in 1738, eight in 1746 and eleven in 1763, reaching twenty volumes by 1773, shortly before Faulkner's own death in 1775. This four-volume edition is complete in itself, being the entirety of the 1735 printing. It contains, among other things, the corrected and authorized edition of Gulliver's Travels, the version still used to this day as the definitive text. "Faulkner's four volumes, 1735, constitute the first authoritative edition of Swift's works by themselves, i.e. not together with those of others as in the Miscellanies, 1727" (Teerink, 24). Teerink 41. Bookplates of noted Chicago collector Harold Greenhill.

Interiors quite clean, tears to lower corners of leaves C3 and M7 in Volume II. Handsome contemporary calf with expert restoration.