ADAM WOLLEY OF ALLEN HILL’S COPY, WITH ANNOTATIONS: THE SECOND COPY IN AMERICA. 8vo. iv pp, 251 pp, (1). Bound in contemporary quarter-calf over marbled boards, with vellum corners; gilt-and-red title label on spine. Upper joints a little cracked; corners very rubbed; otherwise an excellent, unsophisticated copy. F1 with crack/closed tear to blank margin, with no loss. Bookplate of Adam Wolley on pastedown and his signature dated 1778 on title-page. Scarce first edition of this rich description of the Industrial Revolution’s impact on the Northern Counties in the late 18th century, marking a distinct departure from the usual genre of ‘topographical’ literature published before and after Bray’s Tour. Adding anecdotes of local color and observations on the local economy to the usual geographical travelogue, Bray’s work nevertheless probably fits into the earliest glimmerings of the aesthetic movement known as the ‘Pictureseque’, first coined by William Gilpin in 1782; this particular fascination with landscape would also become an obsession of the early Romantics in the succeeding century. Adam Wolley of Allen Hill Farm was the last of an eminent Derbyshire line, and an antiquary of some note, having amassed a huge collection of ancient deeds and documents now in the British Library. Wolley has neatly annotated this copy at various points in the text, mainly of a corrective nature, but sometimes adding his own further observations, some of these quite telling. On p. 73, for example, Bray describes the new Arkwright mills for spinning cotton which now populate the hills outside of Nottingham; Wolley has corrected the name of one such village from Cromfit to Cromford and notes that the number of workers (“chiefly children”) employed there has grown from 200 to 600. In general Wolley’s annotations are sparse, and confined unsurprisingly to his immediate personal locales: Derby, Nottingham, Chatsworth, etc. (pp. 61-122). The present first edition was published anonymously (although the author’s name is here supplied on the title-page in early manuscript), and is held in just one US institution per ESTC (Huntington); a much-expanded second edition with plates was published in 1783 and is more widely-held. * ESTC T110651 (showing a dozen or so UK copies, but just the Huntington in the US).