Flagel: or a Ramble of Fancy through the land of Electioneering.

£2,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

Rare. ESTC records two copies at Bodley only in the UK; Harvard , Library Company of Philadelphia (not in the online catalogue), McGill , UCLA and University of Pennsylvania only in the USA. OCLC add Lafayette College only. No copies recorded on Rare Book Hub. A highly unusual political dream-novel - inspired by Le Sage’s La Diable Boiteau - in which the protagonist is led by the Devil around various rotten boroughs witnessing the debased state of English politics with various digressions on the state of novel writing and the influence of the press. Published during the General Election of March-May 1768. This short anonymous novel begins with the protagonist reading “The Devil upon Two Sticks” (Alain-René Le Sage’s novel of 1707, first published in English the following year). The narrator remarks: “It left a magic upon my mind, of which I could, by no means, disenchant myself; a thousand diverting stories played upon my imagination, and kept it in a quick successive motion; till sinking back in my elbow chair, I fell into a gentle sleep: my fancy was still awake, and the same busy illusions played upon it as before, till growing more and more forgetive, it presented me with the appearance of a devil no less frightful than that which I had been reading of.” (p.2) The devil (named Flagel) boasts: “It is I, that set men upon spending their fortunes to get a seat in P––t, and then send them into the South of France to repair it. It is I, that issue out writs to the Mayors of Co

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