Wetton's Guide-Book to Northampton, and its Vicinity. PRETTY (Edward).

LADY DAVY'S COPY

Wetton's Guide-Book to Northampton, and its Vicinity; with a Historical and Descriptive Account of the Town and Neighbourhood.

Engraved frontispiece, nine plates, folding map, title page vignette and 13 woodcuts in the text.

8vo. [198 x 112 x 21 mm]. vi, [iv], 256 pp. Bound in the original purple cloth, the covers with a blind blocked border and the front blocked in gilt, yellow endleaves. (A little faded and slightly bumped).
Northampton: printed and published by G. N. Wetton. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1849.

Previously published in 1847. A very good copy. With the bookseller's label of Dorman of Northampton and bookplate of Lady Davy. Jane Kerr (1780-1855) married Shuckburgh Ashley Apreece in 1799 but he died in 1807. His widow then made her mark on society, as her distant cousin Walter Scott said, by taking "the blue line, and by great tact and management actually established herself as a leader of literary fashiom". In 1811 she moved from Edinburgh to London and was hotly pursued by Humphrey Davy. They married in 1812, three days after Davy received a knighthood. Her wealth enabled him to retire from routine work and devote himself to chemical researches. The marriage "was not a happy or comfortable union, each party having been rather too accustomed to adulation" (ODNB), but they were together when Sir Humphrey died in Geneva in 1829. Lady Davy continued to travel and entertain and Scott wrote of her "as a lion-catcher, I would put her against the world". She was buried at St. Sepulchre's Church in Northampton.

Stock no. ebc8270