1821. 12mo, pp. xii, 276; with engraved frontispiece, a wood-engraving of a magic lantern, and a number of tables within text; some offsetting on title-page, some light foxing and soiling, otherwise clean and crisp; a couple of small later pencil marginal annotations; in contemporary full tree calf, covers ruled in blind, spine attractively tooled with black morocco label, small nick at head of spine and small crack to upper joint, some light wear to extremities, but otherwise very good; with signature of Alexander Philip on front free endpaper, and his signature and doodling dated 1877 on verso of final blank. First edition of this uncommon scientific work for young adults, intended to both educate and amuse, and one of a growing number of Regency works published at the time celebrating science as an instructive and moral discipline, presented as being a more entertaining ‘mental amusement’ in contrast to more traditional and overtly didactic works for children. As befitting a school room setting, the work is a little more serious in tone than the book of chemical feats, ‘Endless Amusements’, that was published at around the same time, but nevertheless contains a myriad of mathematical experiments, a section on magic squares, chemical feats, and card and magic tricks to while away the hours, with further sections on acoustics, electricity, magnetism, pneumatics and optics, including a discussion and illustration of a magic lantern. As the author notes in his preface, he has drawn inspiration from Jacques Ozanam’s famous and popular 17th century work on recreational mathematics, Récreations mathématiques et physiques (1694), which was to go through numerous editions well into the 19th century.
Enfield appears to have been the author of a number works for children and young adult, including ‘Natural Theology’ (1808?), and a ‘Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language’ (1808), but we believe is not to be confused with William Enfield (1741-1797), the Presbyterian divine, who is best known for his work of 1774, ‘The Speaker’.