SHARP, Samuel. Letters From Italy, Describing the Customs and Manners of that Country, in the Years 1765, and 1766. London: R. Cave, 1766. First edition, 8vo (206 x 123mm.) Title, errata leaf to rear. Contemporary half calf (upper cover detached, spine ends worn). Provenance: Caxton Hall (bookplate to front pastedown). Note: Sharp was a surgeon at Guy’s Hospital and his work ‘Treatise on the Operations of Surgery’, 1739, was the first British study on the technique of surgery. However, due to ill health he took the winter in Italy where he wrote this plain-speaking work. Samuel Johnson liked it. He said ‘there’s a great deal of matter’ in it. – And a further two volumes (G. Fontanini’s ‘Biblioteca Dell’ Eloquenza Italiana’, vol. 2 [only, of 2], 1753, 4to, and Peter Paul Pallet’s ‘Bath Characters: or, Sketches from Life’, second edition, 1808, 8vo) (3).