Dialogues of The Dead by Lord George Lyttelton (also spelled Lyttleton)
Publishing: 1760 printed for W. Sandy; London
This second edition printed in 1760 contains 28 dialogures; the first 25 are Lyttleton's and the final three by his friend Elizabeth Montague. Lyttleton's interlocutors include Virgin and Horace, Mercury and Scaliger The Elder, Plato and Fenelon, Cortez and William Penn, Boileau and Pope, Locke and Boyle, and Lucian and Rebelais. In Number 28, Elizabeth Montague has Plutarch, Charon, and a contemporary London bookseller discussing reading tastes of the day. Lyttleton was a respected and well-connected politician and man of letters. His Dialogues, which went through a number of editions, were the quintessential Augustan imaginary conversations; they were widely imitated and almost no work with the title Dialogue(s) of the Dead was published in England in the decades following without acknowledging him as a model and inspiration. Collated complete.
Condition: five raised bands original leather boards with an early rebacking, five raised bands foxing to the title page and end papers, institutional stamps to cover page and preface cover page, overall in Very Good condition