Author: LETTER-WRITER, THE COMPLETE:
Title: The Complete Letter-Writer, containing Familiar Letters on the Most common Occasions in Life. Also, A Variety of elegant Letters for the Direction and Embellishment of Style, on Business, Duty, Amusement, Love, Courtship, Marriage, Friendship, and other Subjects, To which is prefixed a Plain and Compendious Grammar Of the English Language, With Directions for writing Letters, and the proper Forms of Address. At the End are given Forms of Message-Cards, and a copious English Spelling Dictionary.
Description: London: Printed for the Booksellers, 1798. 12mo (in 6s), pp. viii, [13] - 232 [233 - 278 "English Spelling Dictionary"], engraved frontispiece, contemporary sheepskin (worn); covers detached. Despite the apparent absence of 2 leaves after the Contents, the text appears complete; p. [13] is the first page in gathering B. The leaf after the title-page is signed A3, but the verso is paginated "iv," and the work may lack a half-title or initial blank, as the frontispiece is tipped onto the title-page. Other copies of this work have a four-page Preface following the Contents. The earliest edition that I can locate with this exact title in ESTC is one printed in 1773 in Edinburgh; the latest is 1797, a year before the imprint in this case, printed in Salem, Massachusetts. The latest British imprint found in ESTC is in 1796, in Edinburgh (T. Ross for G. Peattie, Leith; and another for J. Fairbairn), with another in London ( A. Millar, W. Law; and R. Cater; And for Wilson, Spence, and Mawman, York); the latter has a plate, the former does not. All these imprints have a specific publisher or publishers, and it is only this apparently unrecorded 1798 issue that is "Printed for the Booksellers."

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