One portrait browned, light some foxing/browning.
The binding is English. The same roll can be found on two bindings that we have handled in recent years: Oliver Goldsmith, The Citizen of the World (London: Newbery, 1762), presentation copy in red morocco and William Dodd, Poems (London: Dryden Leach, 1767) in calf.
Provenance: 1: From the library of Castletown House, Celbridge, Co. Kildare, the greatest of Irish Palladian houses. The binding was probably made for Thomas Conolly (1738-1803), and has the Conolly crest tooled at the head of the spines and there also are the early nineteenth-century Castletown House bookplate and case label (G5 4to) on the front pastedowns and the original lot number (“499, 6 vols”) from a pre-War Castletown auction survives on a paper tag attached by string to vol. 2 and another lot number “533/6” (perhaps from an earlier sale) is faintly written in chalk on both front covers [see the set of Terence (The Hague, 1726) with a label for Battersby & Co. Dublin auctioneers attached in the same manner].
Castletown House was designed by Allessandro Galilei for William Conolly (d.1729), Speaker of the Irish House of Commons from 1715. It was the only house in Ireland designed by Galilei, who left Ireland four years before construction began in 1722. After the death of “Speaker” Conolly and his widow the house was inherited by his nephew, William, and on his death two years later, by his son, Tom, who became known as “Squire” Conolly. He and his wife Lady Louisa Lennox were responsible for renovating the building and completing the interior decorations, some of the work being undertaken by Sir William Chambers. In the 1780s the library was housed in cases at either end of the Long Gallery. In the 1840s it was moved to what is now the State Bedroom. The house remained in the Conolly family until 1965, when it was rescued from destruction and restored by the Irish Georgian Society, becoming its headquarters until recently. It is now owned by a charitable trust. The bookcases are now at Baron’s Court, Co. Fermanagh (Duke of Abercorn).
