Author: CIBBER (Colley):
Title: An Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, Comedian, and Late Patentee of the Theatre-Royal. Written by Himself. The Second Edition.
Description: London: Printed by John Watts for the Author..., 1740. 8vo, pp. [xvi], 488, title-page in red and black, with last gathering containing Contents leaves misfolded, contemporary calf, new crude morocco label; lacks portrait, front cover detached, rear joint cracked, top and base of spine chipped. With the armorial bookplate of F. P. Young D. D. ("Robson fecit" beneath name) on the front paste-down end-paper, contemporary autograph "Henry Coventry" on title-page, and a note in a later hand (probably early 19th century) about Anne Bracegirdle, the actress. One of Cibber's "regular drinking and gambling companions at White's gentlemen's club was Robert Walpole" (Oxford DNB). It was no coincidence that Cibber was made Poet Laureate while Walpole was Prime Minister. For years Cibber exercised his "untiring support of the Whigs, the party of Prime Minister Robert Walpole" (Oxford DNB). Robert Walpole's son Horace Walpole was so impressed with Cibber's Apology that he said it "deserved immortality". Samuel Johnson admitted it was "entertaining" and "very well done", though he disliked Cibber personally. This copy of the second edition of Cibber's Apology (1740), published the same year as the first, was almost certainly owned by Horace Walpole's close associate Henry Coventry (c.1710-1752), the deist philosopher and miscellaneous writer, as the title-page is signed with that name in a contemporary hand. Manuscript material of any kind in the hand of this philosopher is very rare. The entry in the Oxford DNB on him seems to cite nothing in his hand -- unless the will which is listed happens to be in his hand. Coventry was educated at Eton then Magdalene College, Cambridge, and became a Fellow of the latter. The bookplate is that of a Cantabrigian as well: Thomas Patrick Young (b. circa 1725, d. 1778), Fellow and Benefactor of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. Painted by Nathaniel Dance-Holland (1735-1811), Young's portrait hangs on the wall at Caius, and can be seen on the Art UK website. The bookplate is Franks 32933, but Howe does not identify the owner (E. R. J. Gambier Howe, Franks Bequest: Catalogue of British and American Book Plates Bequeathed to the Trustees of the British Museum by Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks, 3 vols [1903-1904], Vol. 3, p. 252). Sir Egerton Brydges notes that Thomas Patrick Young went "with his friend and patron, Lord Viscount Townshend, into Ireland" (Restituta: Or, Titles, Extracts, and Characters of Old Books in English Literature, Revived [1816], Vol. 4, p. 382). This must be a reference to a trip taken with Charles Townshend, 3rd Viscount Townshend (1700-1764), who was the nephew (or, to be most accurate, the half nephew) of the Right Honourable Henry Pelham (1694-1754). Pelham was of course the dedicatee of Cibber's Apology, and Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1743 to 1754.

Keywords: biography theatre


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