Scarce first edition of the first lecture given by William Gifford Cookesley on the opening of the Windsor and Eton Literary and Scientific Institution. ‘Our Institution, if carried out to its full and proper ends, would confer material advantages on all ranks in the town, I entirely believe: I cannot understand why that, which has proved so benficial elsewhere, should not be beneficial to Windsor. I presume there is nothing injurious in a Library or Museum, abstractedly considered: nay - being very fond of reading a newspaper myself, by my own fireside, I really believe I should not be much frightened, if such an apparition were to invade the public reading room of a society of gentlemen’ (pp. 2-3). The classical scholar William Gifford Cookesley (1802-1880) was educated at Eton College and at King's College, Cambridge, which he entered as a scholar in 1821. From 1829 until 1854 he was an assistant master at Eton. Cookesley published a number of school editions of classical authors, including several of Pindar (1838, 1844, 1851). He also produced some volumes of sermons, and various theological books and pamphlets, including works against popery (1849), on Jews in parliament (1852), and on Mosaic miracles (1853), and a volume of criticisms of Bishop Colenso's views on the Pentateuch (1863).