The Life of John Buncle, Esq;

"A most curious romance-like work"

First edition of one of the more extraordinary novels of the 18th century, much admired by Lamb, Leigh Hunt and Hazlitt, who described John Buncle as "the English Rabelais", saying of the author, "the soul of Francis Rabelais passed into... Amory" (The Round Table, XVIII, 1817); a new edition was published in 1825 "very likely on Hazlitt's recommendation" (Waller and Glover, eds. The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, 1902, p. 471). A second volume, advertised at the end of the present one, did not appear until a decade later, in 1766. Amory (1690/91-1788) was an Irishman who claimed both education at Trinity College, Dublin, and an "extensive acquaintance" (ODNB) with Jonathan Swift. In his latter years in London he had a "'very peculiar look and aspect' and allegedly rarely stirred abroad, except 'like a bat, in the dusk of the evening' (Gentleman's Magazine, 58)" (ibid.).

"John Buncle is an enthusiastic anti-Trinitarian who marries in rapid succession eight (short-lived) wives, each beautiful, learned, and a strict anti-Trinitarian; the personal qualities of all are well represented by the composite Miss Spence who has 'the head of Aristotle, the heart of a primitive Christian, and the form of Venus de Medicis'... His powerful advocacy of education for women produced scepticism even from Amory's admirers. As enthusiastic in learning as in religion, Buncle discourses on topics as varied as monogamy and microscopes, the Spanish fly and fluxions (dismissing George Berkeley's mathematical contribution as worthless)... John Buncle proved popular enough to be reprinted in 1770, and to be translated into German" (ODNB). Lamb wrote to Coleridge, "I have been reading a most curious romance-like work... 'Tis very interesting, and an extraordinary compound of all manner of subjects from the depth of the ludicrous to the heights of sublime religious truth. There is much abstruse science that is above my cut, and an infinite fund of pleasantry". Only two copies of John Buncle show on auction records (1907 and 1966), it is well represented institutionally but decidedly uncommon commercially.