Bradley, Richard
A Complete Body of Husbandry Collected from the Practice and Experience of the Most Considerable Farmers in Britain.
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Seller ID: 800 London: James Woodman and David Lyon, 1727. First edition (xi, 372, adverts.). Tall octavo in full leather illustrated with four folding copperplate engravings depicting farm equipment, barn design, farm lay-out. The 'complete body' here includes chapters on land management, drainage, fertilizing and manuring and in some instances pays close attention to methodology as in Bradley's discussion of 'improvement of ground which is over-run with Broom.' The book is especially noteworthy for, as Fussell points out, "Instead of being rich because he grew a lot to eat, a man was beginning to find he was only rich because he grew a lot to sell, and naturally he wanted to sell at a profit. To do that he must know what it cost him to grow the produce...and so writers began to insert costings in their books and Bradley was one of the earliest to do this" (Old English Farming Books). Richard Bradley (?- 1732) was "a man of general scientific attainment, an indefatigable worker, venturing hazardous predictions, writing some fifteen or twenty volumes... on agriculture, foisting himself into the chair of Botany at Cambridge by noisy reclamations, selling his name to booksellers for attachment to other people's wares...only escaping...removal from his professor's chair by sudden death" (Mitchell, Wet Days at Edgewood quoted in Fussell). That Bradley failed to deliver the requisite lectures at Cambridge did not secure his way in the academic world of the 18th century nor did his apparent ignorance of the classical languages without which scientific works could not be 'adorned and rendered attractive'. Nevertheless, Bradley produced many books on agriculture, if few lectures, which were widely circulated and approved (Fussell). Quite a handsome copy, if somewhat worn around the edges. Price: $600.00  
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