CROMWELL'S EARL: A Life of Edward Mountagu 1st Earl of Sandwich.[Author SIGNED copy.]

UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,authhor SIGNED,1st edn.[Complete number line 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 .] FINE/FINE.No owner inscrptn but colour pictorial Christmas gift presentation sticker/label towards ffe top corner; author's blue ink signature - without dedication - to title page,and price-clipped dw/dj.Bright,crisp,clean,glossy laminated,subject's colour portrait painting illustrated upper panel of dw/dj, with red and white lettering; with negligible shelf-wear and creasing to edges and corners - no nicks or tears present. Inevitable,but miniscule bumping with reciprocal creasing to both head+foot of spine/backstrip of dw/dj and boards. Some light scoring to dw/dj's rear panel,but without affecting the boards beneath.Top+fore-edges bright and clean; contents bright,tight,clean, solid and sound - pristine - no dog-ear reading creases to any pages' corner tips,appears unread - apart from my own collation. Publisher's bright,crisp,clean,sharp-cornered,original plain dark maroon cloth boards with bright,crisp,blocked gilt letters to spine/backstrip and immaculate plain endpapers - already described gift presentation label excepted.UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn,xv-xviipp+1-282pp [paginated] includes acknowledgements,a note on Spanish and Portuguese names,XXI (21) chapters,8pp of 17thC facsimile b/w illustrations reproductions in 1 block,between pp142/3,21 other contemporary (17thC) b/w drawings interspersed throughout the text and the book,sources and biblio and an index,plus [unpaginated] half-title,author SIGNED title page,a dedication,a contents list/ table,an illustrations/ plates list/table,a drawings list/table,a double-page b/w genealogical family tree,and 2pp blanks at the rear.
Pepys is perhaps the best-known instance of the zest and versatility that characterise the second half of the 17thC.Yet,as this new biography shows,his cousin and patron Mountagu, first Earl of Sandwich offers a no less striking example.
In what other period could a man have been a successful soldier,a brilliant and original admiral,a Fellow of the Royal Society,an ambassador charged with the most delicate negotiations and the general overseer of Britain's trade and first uncertain steps in the development of a colonial empire? To add that he was especially valued and liked by both Cromwell and Charles II is to establish him in a rare category.That he was highly praised by both Milton and Clarendon surely puts him in a class of his own.Yet when he was killed in one of the fiercest actions ever fought he was not yet fifty.
Hitherto Sandwich has been known to the general reader as the 'My Lord' of Pepys 'Diary',always respected,often admired,sometimes criticised,occasionally loved but never, as it were,seen in the round.In retirement Pepys himself had serious thoughts of writing his biography: but he never did.Hitherto the only study of him is a two-volume biography published before the First World War and long out of print.
Sandwich,like another of his close friends,John Evelyn, combined a wide range of scientific curiosity with a taste for the arts.Yet among all his activities and responsibilities he noticed and enjoyed the ordinary life of his time.The figure that emerges from this book is no paragon set on a column above the ruck of humanity.On the contrary he emerges as a man of warm affections,happily married,a devoted father and a loyal friend.It was not only Pepys who was to lament him as 'that unparallel'd Lord'.
Richard Ollard,whose life of Pepys first published in 1974 has recently been reissued,has now written a biography based on a thorough study of Sandwich's own journal,kept largely in his own hand and illustrated by his own drawings and those of his companions,many of which are here reproduced for the first time.
Author of a history of the Civil Wars,'This War without an Enemy',and a contrasted study of Charles I and Charles II,'The Image of the King',both recently reissued in paperback,Richard Ollard's most recent biography is that of Clarendon,Sandwich's friend and colleague in the Restoration government.
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