The Oeconomy of Human Life. Translated from an Indian Manuscript, Written by an Ancient Bramin, to which is prefixed An Account of the Manner in which the Said Manuscript was Discover'd. In a letter from an English Gentleman, now residing in China, the the Earl of ****. The fourth Edition.

London, Printed for R.Dodsley, 1751. 8vo. Contemporary full calf, spine and boards decorated with gilt double-fillets; pp. xxiv, 96, engraved frontispiece; rebacked, retainig original spine, lower fly-leaf with tiny trace of worming in the margins, otherwise rather good. First published the previous year, this book presents itself as an English translation of an ancient Indian text found by a Chinese scholar in Lhasa, and is a collection of aphorisms on duties presented very much in the Enlightenment tradition of supposedly Oriental texts produced by European authors: Montesquieu's Lettres persanes (1721) and Oliver Goldsmith's Citizen of the World (1760-1761) being two notable examples. Almost certainly written by Robert Dodsley (1704-–1764), and published first in 1750, the book became an eighteenth-century bestseller, and by the end of the century some two hundred editions had been published in England, Ireland, and America, and it had been translated into many European languages ranging from Latin, Welsh and Gaelic to French, Italian and Hungarian, including Hebrew, Russian Spanish and Potuguese. All early editions are rare and this is the earliest on the market.