HAYLEY, William. ~ The Triumphs of Temper; a Poem. In six Cantos. London: Printed for J. Dodsley, 1781.
4to (270 × 218 mm), pp. [iii]-xii, 164, without half-title; slightly browned at margins; modern calf.
ANR COPY. First edition of Hayley’s most enduring work. ‘Possibly his greatest achievement,... was his didactic poem Triumphs of Temper (1781), which “was to reform the entire feminine mind of England by the advice’”(Bishop, 53). This allegorical work aspired, in rhyming couplets, to teach young women the virtues of a pleasant nature. Its advice was heeded by some: Emma Hamilton thanked Hayley “for the lessons she had learnt from the poem”... and asked Romney to inform Hayley that his poem “made me Lady H.... for Sir W. minds more temper than beauty” (ibid.). Triumphs of Temper ran into fourteen editions and proved to be the most durable of all his publications’ (Painter in Oxford DNB). Barker, ‘Some notes on the bibliography of William Hayley, Part I’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society
Vol. 3, No. 1 (1959), pp. 103-112, 14.