Anna Riggs: Letters from Italy 1776 and an interesting Lot of 17th & 18th century books

THIS CATALOGUE ENTRY IS IN PROCESS

(1) MILLER, (Lady [Anna Riggs]) Letters from Italy, 3 vol, first edition, half-titles, contemporary calf, 8vo, 1776.  Very good copy of an excellent female account of a Grand Tour of Italy in the Romantic period.

Three volumes, full calf, all half titles present, red morocco gilt title labels to spine.  This set is basically in nice condition with the spines a little distressed, but easily refurbished.   The text pages are clean and fine with very occasional light spotting and toning.  Unusually, all three half titles are present in addition to two front and two rear free end-papers.

An underrated, yet important work of Grand Tour literature written at a time when female Grand Tourists were a rarity.  Her Letters was published anonymously, although her authorship was discreetly published in influential circles.  As Marie E McAllister writes of Lady Miller in her article on Ann Flaxman and the journey to Rome:  

Women could not be Grand Tourists. As The institution was explicitly male. Nonetheless, four Englishwomen published successful variants on the Grand Tour account during Ann Flaxman’s lifetime, and more travelled the traditional route of the Tour, usually accompanying a husband. The first published female semi-Tourist was Anna Riggs Miller (1741-1781), whose Letters from Italy, Describing the Manners, Customs, Antiquities, Paintings, &c of that Country, in the Years MDCCLXX and MDCCLXXI appeared anonymously in 1776. It was praised by the leading periodicals of the day, even though Horace Walpole grumbled that Miller “does not spell one word of French or Italian right through her three volumes of travels” (Letters 24.197). Miller’s book was successful enough that a second “corrected” edition appeared the next year. Although more utilitarian than literary, it remains a leading example of the travel account as fine arts guidebook or essay in arts criticism. Miller describes hundreds of paintings, sculptures, and works of architecture in great detail, giving her opinions and noting which are worth a visit; while she pays particular attention to Renaissance art, there is even a section on up-and-coming young artists worth patronizing. Letters from Italy also broke important new ground in its attention to gender: far more than its male-authored predecessors, Letters to Italy discusses gendered themes and women’s lives

Elizabeth Crawford –  independent researcher and author of a number of books on the women’s suffrage movement – including ‘The Women’s Suffrage Movement: a reference guide’, ‘Campaigning for the Vote: Kate Parry Frye’s Suffrage Diary’, and ‘Art and Suffrage: a biographical dictionary of suffrage artists’. 

Crawford’s entry on Anna Riggs titled ” La Bella Libertà: Anna Miller” is as follows:

‘I love the sun and the hotter he shines, the more health and spirits are dealt me. However, this luminary is no friend to the complexion, and I have contrived to make a hat of pasteboard, and trimmed it with blond and pink ribbon. I believe I shall find it extremely convenient in the mornings when we are walking among the Ruins, for constantly going out in the Roman Fashion, with nothing to shade my face, has tanned me to such a degree, that I know not whether all the strawberry-water in Rome will be able to whiten me again.’ How different from the preoccupations of those – men – undertaking the Grand Tour was this observation, made by the first Englishwoman to publish an account of her travels in Italy, – in Letters from Italy Describing the Customs, Antiquities, Paintings etc of that Country, in the years MDCCLXX and MDCCLXXI to a Friend Residing in France (E & C Dilly, 1776). How such comments irritated the literati of her day; how they appeal to me.

The woman who had the temerity so publicly to set herself – and her complexion – amidst the glories of Italy was Anna Miller, wife of a somewhat impoverished Irishman. Her portrait, above, was painted by another Italophile Englishwoman, Ellis Cornelia Knight. Having exhausted her small fortune in building a villa near Bath, the Millers had, for reasons of economy, retired to the Continent. Leaving their infant children in France in the care of her mother, to whom the original letters were written, they then repaired to Italy. The Letters were published five years after their return to England. In the interim Mrs Miller’s reign over her literary salon at Batheaston had resulted in several volume of Poetical Amusements, published by the Dilly brothers.

It is likely that Anna Miller, as well as prizing her inclusion in the Dilly list alongside such bluestockings as Elizabeth Montagu and Catherine Macaulay, saw the publication of her Letters as an opportunity to aid the family finances. The book clearly enjoyed some success, being bought in numbers sufficient for Dilly to issue a slightly revised two-volume edition in 1777. Mrs Miller was soon identified as the author and her work received some attention, not least from that waspish derider, Horace Walpole, to whom, of the book, Mrs Delaney commented, ‘very conceited, they say, and not worth buying.’ It was doubtless considered ‘conceited’ for a woman such as Mrs Miller to propound her views on taste, interposing herself between the reader and the art canon. In addition one can imagine Walpole’s reaction to the description of the pasteboard hat or to Anna Miller’s comment of the passage into Italy over Mon Cenis: ‘At some moments during the descent, I could not help fancying myself a witch upon a broomstick.’

Today, looking at Italy through Mrs Miller’s keen and sympathetic eyes, we bridge the centuries, experiencing everyday details of the traveller’s life and relishing the people and sights she encountered. She is a diligent reporter, telling us that ‘for fear of error, I take my notes upon the spot, which I assure you is often very troublesome, as I am frequently obliged to write in my pocket-books standing, and at times placing it on the pedestal of a statue, or the moulding of a surbase’. She displays all the inquisitiveness of a tabloid hack. In the Queen’s apartments in the Royal Palace in Turin, noticing shelves of books, ‘My curiosity urged me to open two or three, amongst which I found the Female Spectator translated from English; a book enitled A Monitor for Sovereigns, doubled down and marked in several places.’ She brings immediacy to every experience, detailing the food, furnishings and service at inns the length of Italy. Dining at ‘a village called Maschieri in the dirtiest of all possible inns [we] supped upon, what think you? A pork soup with the Bouilliée in it, namely a hog’s head, with the eye-lashes, eyes, and nose on ; the very food the wretched animal and last eat of before he made his exit remained sticking about its teeth

Of sporting bibliographic interest: Miller’s Travels includes an early reference to both football and cricket!….

Page 114 of Volume III includes a description of the Villa Borghese and its park where “the English are permitted, by the Borghese family, to repair twice a week, and play at cricket and football: we women go sometimes and see the sport, as do the Roman ladies and their fine Abbatis, who form a brilliant body of spectators.”   

The celebrated architect Sir John Soane journeyed in Italy from 1778 to 1780 , having been sent there by the Royal Academy as a Travelling Student in order to complete his architectural studies . Anna Miller’s Letters from Italy was his constant companion during his formational Grand Tour – his copy of Miller’s Travels in the Soane Soane Museum is filled with his annotations. He  furnished another copy with his illustrations of the scenes depicted – a copy that was unfortunately lost with some of Soane’s luggage.  Lady Miller voiced her grief at this mishap.  For Soane, a particular appeal of Miller’s account was the pioneering attention she paid to the visual art she encountered on her travels.

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(2) GAY, John.  Trivia; Or, The Art of Walking the Streets of London, Bernard Lintott, at the Cross-Keys between the Temple-Gates in Fleetstreet, [1716].  First Edition.
8° Engraved title device, woodcut head- and tailpieces.

Bound by the illustrious New York firm of Stikeman & Co.  Those bindings just signed “Stikeman” as in this example are hand finished and were executed between the 1880’s to circa 1915,

With the bookplate of Thomas Jefferson McKee (1840 – 1899) – prominent New York attorney and collector of rare books whose personal library contained not only a scarce first edition of Poe’s Tamerlane but a holograph copy of “Ulalume” . On his death in 1899, at which time his entire library — consisting of several thousand rare books, manuscripts, and portraits — was consigned for auction at New York’s Anderson Galleries.

FIRST EDITION, the ordinary paper issue with printer’s ornaments instead of the engravings. 

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(3) LASSELS, Richard: The Voyage of Italy, ‘Printed at Paris by Vincent du Moutier, 1670.

NOTE: **LACKING** the last page No. 447 (recto with text, verso blank). Cut close by the binder (see gallery images) with the very occasional shaving into one or two letters of the marginal text  (most closely cut pages shown in gallery images).   

2 parts in 1 volume, FIRST EDITION, FIRST IMPRESSION.  The second, expurgated edition, was printed the same year as the first, edited for its London audience with the author’s sentiments considerably softened. 

This true first edition of 1670 was printed in Paris by Vincent du Moutier and is much the scarcer of the two variants appearing in 1670.

” One of the best accounts of the curious things of Italy ever delivered to the world in any book of travels” (John Wilkes)

In this first issue: the phrase ‘Grand Tour’ is coined for the first time anywhere in print (see gallery images).                           A canonical work of 17th century Grand Tour travel literature.

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(4) THE WORKS OF SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, KNIGHT. Late president of the Royal Academy. Containing his discourses, idlers, a journey to Flanders and Holland, and his commentary on Du Fresnoy’s Art of Painting; to which is prefixed an account of the life and writings of the author.

By Edmond Malone, Esq. one of his executors.

Three volumes.  The Third edition, corrected.

Published by T. Cadell, Jun. and W. Davies. London. 1801. 

A fair copy of a common book, made interesting by its provenance.  Title page signed by William Lamb with Panshanger Bookplate.  Also with extensive inscription in hand of William Lamb.