£175
8vo, pp. 87, [1]. Original blue sugar-paper wrappers. In bookseller’s olive-green paper postal cover, c. 1900, with printed paper address label to front. A touch of soiling. Wrappers a little soiled and chipped, bookseller’s cover rather chipped and creased. Ownership inscription of J. Lingard dated Nov. 1804 inside front wrapper.
Poet and historian William Hutton (1723-1815) was so taken with Blackpool when he visited in 1788 that he produced this guidebook in in partnership with a consortium of landlords, who, as he explains in his preface here, neglected to pay him the money due. This second edition was produced in an effort to recoup some of those losses, although the publisher's note to the preface to the 1817 3rd edition records that 'nearly all' the copies of this second edition were destroyed in a fire, which bodes ill for Hutton's margins. Accordingly, this second edition is the scarcest of the three editions, with Library Hub recording just three holdings: Senate House, Manchester and BL, with Worldcat adding Stanford.
This copy retains the postal wrapper of W.N. Pitcher & Co. of 49 Cross Street, Manchester. William Pitcher was manager of Sotheran's Manchester branch and bought their lease and stock when Sotherans gave it up in 1893; the '(late with Henry Sotheran & Co.)' on the label places it in the immediate years following.
