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The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682)

Author A. Marsh (pseudonym)
Categories Humor, Essays
Language English
Published 1682
Word count 69,763
Excerpt

e volume here, privately reprinted by the Navarre Society, is surely proof most positive. The original is a small thick volume; it bears the imprint "London, Printed in the year 1683," and but one perfect copy is known; that copy lay unappreciated in the heart of London in an antiquarian bookseller's shop.

Fortunately, however, for our literature and for students of the manners of the commonality of the period it was seen by a colleague, who wondered why he did not know it. After purchasing it he found the reason why--the Bodleian Library alone possessed a copy of the work (imperfect); later a copy of the first part (only) appeared in the last portion of the sale of the great Huth Collection. The present text is taken from the perfect copy mentioned above.

The curious title rather damns the literary interest of the book, which presents pictures of the cit and his wife at work and play which Fielding, had he lived in the seventeenth century, might have written. It is thought that the book was printed in