The Writer's time redeemed, and speaker's words recalled.: ...or, Annet's short hand perfected. Further enlarged and improved...

"ONE OF THE EARLIEST ATTEMPTS TO PRODUCE A TRUE PHONETIC SYSTEM": A SCARCE PROVINCIAL IMPRINT

HERVEY, Thomas, Rev. The Writer's time redeemed, and speaker's words recalled. By a Pen shap'd both for oral Expedition, and the most legible Plainness and Punctuality; or, Annet's short hand perfected. Further enlarged and improved, in a Method strikingly easy, and engaging to the meanest Capacity. In two parts. Part I. Containing the Characters classed in their alphabetical and derivative Order, together with the Rules of their Application...Part II. Contains the Rules and Examples, with a special View to the following of a Speaker--Together with sufficient Copper-plate Specimens to both Parts... 12mo, contemporary 1/4 morocco backed marbled boards (rubbed), pp. [5]-v-xvii, [1], 92, [4, subscribers' list] + 4 plates on 2 folding leaves, uncut. Kendall: Printed for T. Pennington [1779?].

First Edition of a substantial revision of Peter Annet's Shortland (1750) by Rev. Thomas Hervey, curate of Underbarrow, near Kendall. One of the scarcest works of its kind with no copies appearing at auction, and none listed online as of this writing (3/2/21). "One of the earliest attempts to produce a true phonetic system."-The Typewriter and Phonographic World (New York: September, 1901), p. 395. "...while Hervey acknowledged his indebtedness to Annet, he appears only to have copied about eight of his alphabet characters; and he expressly states:-'The plan of the second part is wholly new as to anything found in Annet, for though the characters are chiefly his, yet I have been obliged to Byrom for the substance of the 17 first rules, and the other 25 are my own'...Prompted by a 'well-known ingenious and learned author,' he indulged the hope that his system might become 'universal.'"-Edward Pocknell, in Pocknell's Legible Shorthand (1881), pp. 72-73. One hundred and twenty copies were subscribed for. Contemporary ownership signature "Robert Sandys/ Ulverstone," presumably related to Miles Sandys of the same town, who is to be found in the subscribers' list. NYPL Shorthand Collection, p. 204. Westby-Gibson, Bibliography of Shorthand, pp. 93-94. Alston VIII, 262