A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY THROUGH FRANCE AND ITALY. BY MR. YORICK

London: Printed for T. Becket and P. A. De Hondt, 1768. FIRST EDITION. 160 x 100 mm. (6 1/4 x 4"). With the half titles, subscribers' list, and the seldom-seen Advertisement leaf bound after Subscribers List in volume I. Two volumes..
Contemporary marbled calf boards backed with calf, raised bands, red morocco labels (volume II with very expert repairs to head of both joints). In excellent modern green cloth chemises in matching morocco-backed slipcase. With an engraved coat of arms in the text. Accompanied by a typewritten letter dated 24 March 1967 from the Rare Books Department of the Scribner Book Store in New York to Chicago collector Miss Frances Hooper, enclosing these volumes on approval. Cross, pp. 603-04; Rothschild 1972 (variant 1 in both volumes); Tinker 1978 (noting the inserted advertisement leaf present here). ◆Leather on spines somewhat crackled, paper boards rather chafed, extremities a bit rubbed, overall mild browning to leaves, frequent faint corner creases, isolated small rust spots or trivial marginal stains, but still an extremely appealing copy--clean and fresh internally, in still sturdy contemporary bindings.

This is a pleasing copy of the first printing of a major work in the canon of Laurence Sterne (1713-68), and from the library of a distinguished American woman. In 1762, Sterne's poor health forced him to leave England for France and Italy. Upon his return to London in 1766, he had the gratifying experience of being treated like a literary lion, and he was greeted in the same way when he later revisited Paris. The present work is the literary product of those travels, and is still satisfying to read. Former owner Frances Hooper (1892-1986) was a pioneering female advertising executive who established her own ad agency in Chicago in the 1920s, where her clients included the Wrigley Company of chewing-gum fame. She acquired an impressive collection of modern art and an extensive library. A graduate of Smith College, she was a founding member of the Virginia Woolf Society, a fellow of the Pierpont Morgan Library, and a member of the Hroswitha Club (1944-2004), an American bibliophilic society for serious women book collectors formed at a time when organizations like the Grolier Club did not accept female members. Copies of this work are not difficult to find, but copies that are complete with the Advertisement leaf bound after the Subscribers List in volume I, as here, are rarely seen..