Peck - Desiderata Curiosa - 1732-1735

Desiderata Curiosa: The Ordered Chaos of English Memory

Monumental work by the eighteenth-century English antiquarian, Francis Peck's Desiderata curiosa presents itself as a laboratory of historical memory, where documents, epitaphs, letters, and testimonies intertwine in a deliberately discontinuous yet densely packed narrative. More than a simple repertoire, it is an erudite machine that tries to salvage dispersed fragments of English past, turning them into a mosaic of voices, authorities, and curiosities. The apparently chaotic structure reflects an encyclopedic ambition typical of Enlightenment antiquarianism: to collect everything, to preserve everything, to interpret everything. In this sense, Peck builds not only a book, but a device of historical memory, suspended between erudition and archival obsession.
MARKET VALUE
Complete copies, in good contemporary bindings, generally sit between 500 and 800 euros. The presence of the engraved portrait and the nine copper plates significantly impact the value.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION AND CONDITION
Two volumes. Contemporary full brown morocco binding, spines with raised bands and red labels and gilded decorations. Boards with scratches, abrasions, and discolorations; signs of damp on the front board of the first volume. Very loose hinges. Engraved portrait of the author in the frontispiece and 9 copper plates. Paper with foxing and physiological browning. In old books, with a multihundred-year history, some imperfections may be present and are not always noted in the description. Pp. (2); 4nn; 8; 12nn; 26; 52; 50; 44; 48; 20nn. (2); 22; 68; 58; 52; 32; 50; 36; 32; 56; 26; 18; (2).

FULL TITLE AND AUTHOR
Desiderata Curiosa.
London, 1732–1735.
Francis Peck.

CONTEXT AND SIGNIFICANCE
Desiderata curiosa sits at the heart of English antiquarianism, a movement that, between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, developed a systematic attention to documents, genealogies, epigraphy, and local memories. Peck, more than organizing a linear argument, accumulates materials: letters from statesmen, wills, funerary inscriptions, minor treatises, creating a kind of portable archive. The value of the work lies less in narrative coherence than in documentary richness, often derived from manuscripts now lost or difficult to access. The apparent disorder—in fact criticized by contemporaries—is the trace of an inclusive, almost compulsive method, reflecting the will to preserve the past in its fragmentary entirety. The work thus becomes a mine for historians, genealogists, and collectors, and testifies to the shift from narrative history to documentary history.

BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR
Francis Peck (1692–1743) was an antiquarian, clergyman, and member of the Society of Antiquaries of London. A typical figure of early 18th-century English erudition, he devoted much of his activity to the collection and transcription of historical documents. Desiderata curiosa, published in two volumes between 1732 and 1735, represents his most important and ambitious work, an expression of an antiquarian approach aimed at preserving and disseminating rare and dispersed materials.

PRINTING HISTORY AND CIRCULATION
The first edition was published in two separate volumes (1732 and 1735). The work achieved a reasonable circulation among scholars and antiquarians, but also drew criticisms for its disorganized structure. Later reprints, including those in the second half of the eighteenth century, broadened its circulation but with less collector interest than the princeps. Complete copies of the first edition, especially with all plates and in contemporary bindings, remain relatively sought after today.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES
ESTC T139121 (vol. I, 1732); ESTC T139122 (vol. II, 1735); ICCU/OPAC SBN, records relating to London editions 1732–1735; British Library Catalogue, Peck, Desiderata curiosa; Lowndes, Bibliographer’s Manual of English Literature, p. 1828; Brunet, Manuel du libraire, IV, col. 452; Graesse, Trésor de livres rares, V, p. 172; antiquarian catalogs and repertoires of eighteenth-century English antiquarian literature.