Description

[004120] Lewis, George Cornewall. A Treatise on the Methods of Observation and Reasoning in Politics. London: John W. Parker, 1852. First Edition. 8vo. Hardback. Good. Two volumes complete – Volume One – [5], vi-xi, [2], 2-479pp, [3]; Volume Two – [3], iv-xi, [2], 2-475pp, [1]. Contemporary full polished calf, raised bands, spines in six panels, title label to second panel, author / volume label to third, remaining panels gilt with volute corner pieces, central diamond shaped flower head tool and dots, gilt roll to edges of covers, edge of boards and inner edges, all edges marbled, with spot patterned marbled endpapers

Upper joint of volume one split and weak though holding, chip to head of back strip with some loss, upper joint of volume two slightly split but holding well, rubbed to extremities, corners bumped. Light foxing to endpapers, text is generally fairly clean

Lewis, Sir George Cornewall (1806-1863), politician and author. Having worked overseeing poor law changes in Ireland, Lewis became editor of the Edinburgh Review in 1851, this “confirmed Lewis’s place at the centre of early Victorian Liberal politics and letters. To the latter in the 1840s and 1850s he contributed four ambitious studies, An Essay on the Government of Dependencies (1841), An Essay on the Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion (1849), A Treatise on the Methods of Observation and Reasoning in Politics (2 vols., 1852), and An Inquiry into the Credibility of the Early Roman History (2 vols., 1855), a sustained attack upon the classical scholarship of Niebuhr. He numbered among his circle of friends George and Harriet Grote, T. B. Macaulay, H. H. Milman, Charles Greville, Anthony Panizzi, and Abraham Hayward” (ODNB)