HARRIS, Walter. A Topographical and Chorographical Survey of the County of Down. Including some Part of the Natural and Civil History. Intended as An Essay towards a fuller Description of the Kingdom of Ireland, than has hitherto appeared. To which are Annexed, queries, Recommended to the Curious, to enable them to make proper enquiries in their respective Neighbourhoods.

Dublin: Printed by S. Powell, For Edward Exshaw, at the Bible on Cork-hill, opposite to the Old-Exchange, Bookseller, 1740. pp. [7], 8-50. Modern quarter calf on marbled boards, title in gilt along spine. Signed from the author on titlepage ‘Dono Authoris.’ Tissue repair to inner top margin of titlepage. A very good copy. Exceedingly rare.
ESTC T144996 with 8 locations only. This edition not in Bradshaw.
This is the exceedingly rare first edition to the expanded 1744 work The Antient and Present State of the County of Down, which the DNB describes as “the first Irish County history on a large scale ever written.” This scarce pamphlet has an importance not immediately evident. Printed initially in Dublin and reprinted in London, it was the precursor to the four substantial histories of Counties Down, Waterford, Cork and Kerry that were published over the next 16 years. The latter three were the work of Charles Smith, the first presumed to be mainly the work of Walter Harris. Drawing inspiration from the unpublished topographical county surveys gathered half a century earlier by the Dublin Philosophical Society (but never published), the group around Harris and Smith developed plans for an ambitious programme of county histories, plans which were formalized with the establishment of the Physico-Historical Society in Dublin in 1744. The basic structure for such histories was included in the essay here, but was to be elaborated later.
The minutes of the short-lived Society survive (in the Royal Irish Academy), as do miscellaneous papers of Walter Harris relating to their plans and early results (in the Armagh Public Library), but the interactions of Harris, Smith and a handful of clerical associates remain unclear. One puzzle relates specifically to the authorship of this essay in 1740 and of the much larger work on Co. Down that appeared (again anonymously) in 1744. The note on the title page of this copy may help to resolve the authorship of the 1740 essay: ‘Dono authoris’, (a version of the classic dedication inscription Ex dono auctoris/from the author’s gift) implying a single author, and although the signature has been cropped, it seems to begin with an ‘H’. By contrast, the Co. Down volume of 1744 has an unsigned dedication to the celebrated Hans Sloane from ‘the editors’, indicating that Charles Smith (and possibly others) were by then the co-authors in what it seems had started as Harris’s work.

[Cat 160]