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A poem of nine four-line verses with a footnote giving a brief description of Robert Levet (?1701-82), a native of Hull, and a self-taught physician who for many years had resided with Johnson. Courtney (p. 156) lists only the versions of the poem published in the Gentleman’s Magazine (August 1793) and in the London Magazine (September 1793). The authorised edition was probably the former, making the British Magazine version the first of several piracies.

First and only edition. The poet Henry Headley (1765–1788) matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford in 1782, and immediately became close to the poet William Bowles, and William Benwell, the classicist (Oxford DNB). Around this time, while visiting friends in Norfolk, he fell deeply in love with a woman named Myra (i.e., of the poem ‘To Myra’ in the present volume), but was left heartbroken after she had been ‘prevailed on to marry a rival … He quitted Oxford in 1785, it is said in an agony of disappointment, and without any communication with his friends’ (ibid.). This highly emotional incident prompted him to hastily and anonymously publish his book of poetry, Fugitive Pieces (1785), containing poems he had written at the age of nineteen, and ‘had previously appeared in print. They were reissued with additions in 1786 as Poems and Other Pieces by Henry Headley [the present volume], and the book was inscribed to Dr P—r (Parr). These poems were subsequently included in R. A. Davenport’s British Poets (vol. 73) and in Park’s Poets (vol. 41)’ (ibid.). The present work, he tells the reader, was conceived in a moment of regret for originally publishing many of the poems so hastily with errors: ‘The majority of the following Pieces, which have been before much too hastily, and perhaps undeservedly, made public, are here collected and republished, solely for the sake of correcting many of their imperfections, and of rendering them (if possible) somewhat less exceptionable’ (‘To the Reader’). Jackson, p. 126.

Two rare works of Regency poetry, both FIRST AND ONLY EDITIONS, by two unnamed teenage poets, composed in their ‘leisure moments’. The pensive and melancholy Evening Hours uses the Augustan school as its model, and humbly asks its critics bear in mind that ‘the following [poems] are the productions of the productions of early years, when the vanity of youth delights itself in golden speculations—in dreams of perennial greatness, and attempts, forgetful of the innumerable difficulties that must be surmounted’ (p. vi). The critics were, for their part, suitably gentle and encouraging in their reviews, and pointed to a clear ‘promise of future excellence’ (British Lady’s Magazine). The Literary Gazette was particularly complimentary: ‘we trust the writer will be satisfied with the assurance which we can honestly give him, that with all the blemishes in our power to detect, he might solace himself with the acknowledgment that not one of the greatest poets of the present day produced, at the age of nineteen, works more creditable to their names’. John Chappell would publish one more poem ‘by the author of Evening Hours’ that year, Monody to the Memory of the Princess Charlotte Augusta.

The Nun was, unfortunately, not quite so lucky in its reception, despite also attributing any perceived crudeness to the zeal of youth: ‘its contents were chiefly composed at sea, between the ages of sixteen and twenty, in the leisure moments which the avocations of the Author, in his profession, afforded him from his duty. As most of these trifles were written in the bustle of midshipman’s life, and far from the halcyon bowers of literary ease, it is hoped the hand of criticism will be indulgent’ (Preface). The Monthly Review, however, did not suffer this particular fool gladly: ‘This naval officer has not aimed at high polish, and should have remained satisfied with the applause of his mess-mates.’ I. COPAC lists 2 copies only (BL, Bodleian), to which WorldCat adds Yale. II. COPAC lists 1 copy only (BL), to which WorldCat adds 3 (Harvard, Stanford, Yale).

First editions. ‘In 1819 Luttrell published some graceful, if rather colourless, elegiacs entitled Lines Written at Ampthill Park in the Autumn of 1818, and dedicated to Henry, Lord Holland’ (Oxford DNB). Rogers’s Human Life has been compared to Byron: ‘Detailing various scenes from cradle to grave in the life of a gentleman from a background similar to Rogers’s own, the poem gave Rogers the opportunity to confront his own sufferings in a vicarious form. He never married, and there is a wistfulness in the delineation of domestic scenes’. (Oxford DNB). Jackson, p. 444.

First edition. A scarce provincial tribute to Wellington, the subscribers list consisting almost entirely of Northumberland names, in Sunderland, Monkwearmouth and Bishopwearmouth. Worldcat: Stanford and Indiana only in US. Jackson, p. 390; Johnson 846.

First edition. An ambitious Miltonesque account of the last battle and the end of the world with an imperial twist, describing Christian Britannia’s rule over the infidel kingdoms among the preconditions for the attainment of the millennium. Written while Townsend was still at Trinity College, Cambridge, p. 60* bears an additional dedication to the reverend G.F. Tavel, late fellow and tutor of the college. This copy, in its elaborate binding (now in indifferent condition) is a presentation copy, with an autograph letter from Townsend to Lord Eldon seeking patronage: ‘I submit it as proof of industry, and as the first effort of a young clergyman, who, with a rising family, has only his exertion to rely on, for support, and advancement in his profession’. Jackson, p. 390.

First edition. of ‘the first significant piece of verse propaganda directed explicitly against the English slave systems’, a core text in Anglo-American abolition poetry, and an important influence on works to follow including The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano in 1789 (Wood, The Poetry of Slavery, Oxford UP, p. 36). What sets this poem apart from subsequent abolitionist writings, however, is its shockingly modern treatment of miscegenation. As the then-anonymous authors allude to in their advertisement, they are sympathetic to and supportive of a black man’s right to love and marry a white woman: ‘[the poem was] occasioned by an article of news which appeared last week in the London papers, intimating that “a Black, who a few days before, ran away from his master, and got himself christened, with intent to marry his fellow-servant, a white woman, being taken, and sent on board the Captain’s ship, in the Thames; took an opportunity of shooting himself through the head”’ (Advertisement). The poem goes on to describe in visceral detail the mistreatment and suicide of the slave, as reported by the papers. Day would add a lengthy polemic against Anglo-American attitudes towards slavery in the second edition.

Thomas Day (1748–1789), a disciple of Rousseau, was a complicated man. Despite such progressive abolitionist views, he famously ‘decided that, if his ideal woman did not exist, she would have to be created. In 1769 he adopted, with scant regard for legal niceties, two girls from foundling hospitals and secretly bore them off to France to see which of them he could educate (in accordance with Rousseau's ideas) into becoming a suitable wife for himself. One, whom he renamed Sabrina Sidney, seemed promising, and in 1770 he brought her back to Stowe House, near Lichfield, for special tuition. But after conducting some extraordinary experiments to test her hardiness, which included dropping hot sealing wax on her arm and firing a pistol at her skirts, Day concluded that she was insufficiently phlegmatic. He cast her off with a small allowance and declared that he wished never to see her again. Sabrina would later marry Day’s friend John Bicknell’ (Oxford DNB). Jackson, p. 19; Sabin 18987.

First edition of this verse collection. Including, ‘The Lady of the Wreck, or Castle Blarneygig’—a sustained parody of Sir Walter Scott, The Lady of the Lake and the current craze for Scottish medievalism, with a mock dedication. ‘The Author of this Work, has, merely, adopted the Style which a northern GENIUS has, of late, render’d the Fashion, and the Rage:—He has attempted, in this instance, to become a Maker of the Modern-Antique; a Vender of a new Coinage, begrimed with the ancient oerugu;—a Constructor of the dear pretty Sublime, and sweet little Grand:— a Writer of a Short Epick Poem, stuff’d with Romantick Knick-knackeries; and interlarded with Songs, and Ballads, à la mode de Chevy Chace, Edom o Gordon, Sir Lancelot du Lake, &c. &c...’ (‘Advertisement’). Jackson, p. 362.

First and only edition.

Fourth edition of the Seatonian Prize poem for 1757, ‘perhaps the best that has ever yet appeared’ (The Critical Review). Glynn is said to have submitted the poem out of his dislike for George Bally, who had won in 1754 and 1756 (and was to win again, in 1758). He became a noted physician-attending, for example, Thomas Gray in his final illness, showing ‘judgement and attention, but with characteristic eccentricity’ (Oxford DNB).

Rare first edition of an earnest (if critically slated) poem presumably reflecting the author’s own rags-to-riches story. Hutton (1723–1815) is credited with opening the first circulating library in Birmingham (Oxford DNB), and was born into abject poverty:

‘This respectable veteran, who was literally the artificer of his own ample fortune … was sent, before he was five years old, to a poor day-school … and when he has attained his seventh year, was placed in the silk-mills, where he passed a miserable period of seven years. Having lost his mother, and been cruelly treated by his master, he formed the resolution of seeking his fortune … He had now acquired an inclination for reading; and, having met with three volumes of the Gentleman’s Magazine, contrived, in an awkward manner, to bind them himself – a profession to which he afterwards applied himself with some success. He opened a shop at Southwell, at the rent of 20s. a year, with about twenty-shillings-worth of books … He soon after purchased the refuse of a Dissenting minister’s library; and from that period his affairs began to wear a pleasant and promising aspect’ (The Gentleman’s Magazine, Oct. 1815).

Hutton went on to run a successful paper warehouse in Birmingham, which sustained him for the rest of his life and allowed him to publish some of his own writing, including his well-regarded History of Birmingham (1782). Jackson, p. 189 (erroneously giving the dated as ‘1794’); Johnson 479 (a Birmingham edition dated ‘1793’, but ESTC shows that this is in fact a nineteenth-century reprint); not in Sabin, though there are a number of references to America (including ‘that Fabius, Washington’). ESTC locates 4 copies only (Birmingham Central Libraries, Birmingham University, British Library, Library of Congress).

Second edition of John Williams’s Shrove Tuesday (1791; 4 copies in ESTC), an anti-clerical and anti-aristocratic satirical poem emblematic of his controversial style (Oxford DNB). It was also issued as part of his Cabinet of Miscellanies (1794?).
The publisher has, perhaps wisely, removed Williams’ preface for the second edition, as it ruffled feathers among reviewers when it was first published: ‘…those authors who are resolved to acquire a fugitive fame independent of talents, send a copy of their works to the Editor of the Review with a guinea, and then they may either write the criticism themselves (which is done in nine instances out of ten) or received more praise from the honest editor for their doggerel nonsense, than Virgil would think even just if describing his incomparable Aeneid’ (p. iv, ‘Declaratory Dedication’ of the 1791 edition). The Critical Review, for its part, certainly took offense, referring to the poem as ‘incoherent rhapsody and incongruent metaphor’ (April 1792). Jackson, p. 194 (first edition).

FIRST PRINTING of the ‘revised and corrected’ edition of the physician and poet John Armstrong’s ‘glowingly explicit sex manual in blank verse’, here newly excised of some of the racier passages, including an excerpt describing a wet dream (Oxford DNB).

The Oeconomy of Love, first published in 1736, was Armstrong’s most frequently reprinted work in the eighteenth century, and was ‘chiefly intended as a Parody upon some of the didactic Poets; and, that it might be still the more ludicrous, the Author in some Places affected the stately Language of Milton’ (p. [5], author’s advertisement). Armstrong ‘had a reputation for drinking, swearing, and indolence; he was habitually querulous and sarcastic, but discerning friends, including Thomson, Smollett, and Hume, found his melancholy pleasing. In his last decade he mellowed: Fanny Burney, in 1772, thought him “very droll”, “an amazing old man”’ (ibid.). The Bowyer ledgers record that 750 copies were printed (Maslen & Lancaster 4699). ESTC lists 7 only (Cambridge, NLS, V&A in the UK).

First edition, scarce. James Elphinston (1721–1809) was an educationist and advocate of spelling reform who published several works on the pedagogy of modern languages. The present publication, translating a small number of Martial’s epigrams, served as a specimen for subscribers, in the hopes that in time the subscription list would grow large enough to support a full translation: ‘The whole, thus prepared for the public, waits only the completion of that catalogue, which would already do honor to any literary enterprise, and to this announces immortality. The sooner therefore the remaining names, and the number each commands, are ascertained, the sooner will every wish be gratified; and justice of every kind be done to the Encouragers, as well as to the Undertaker: in whose hands may meantime be seen, the whole, or any part, of the Manuscript’ (Preface). The full work was finally published in 1782 but was poorly received by critics (Oxford DNB). His efforts to devise a completely reformed system of spelling in the 1780s would earn him recognition among twentieth-century philologists, but very few in his own day; Benjamin Franklin was, however, a notable exception. Not in Jackson. ESTC lists 8 copies (BL, Glasgow, NLS (2 copies), Bodleian, Cornell, Library Company of Philadelphia, Illinois).

First edition of Fosbroke’s poem, praised for being ‘the fruit of a great deal of curious research’ (Critical Review) into English monasticism. In his preface, Fosbrooke (he later changed it to ‘Fosbroke’) stresses that his aim is not ‘to reconcile all the different orders’, but rather to highlight ‘that there must be points in which they all agree … By describing these and adding such ceremonial particulars, as he could most conveniently procure, the Author hopes he has been able to convey a general idea of the nature of a Monastic Life’ (Preface).

A nice piece of provincial typography, the work is dedicated to Edward Jenner (who subscribed for three copies); there are eight other Jenners in the subscribers’ list. Jackson, p. 207; Johnson 337.

A Derby imprint, collecting some of the most popular poems and satires by Woty, versifier, solicitor’s clerk and Grub-street writer, including The Auctioneers; a Town Eclogue and The Female Advocate. JohnsonNot in Jackson or Johnson.

Second edition; we have been unable to locate a copy of the first. Europa rediviva is a sweeping view of Europe as a triumphant ‘brotherhood in war–one family, in peace!’ (p. 19). Eton-educated Henry Gally Knight (1786–1846) published a number of poems in the 1810s to generally positive reviews, but did not garner acclaim in earnest until his Architectural Tour in Normandy (1836), which established his reputation as an well-regarded, if amateur, antiquarian (Oxford DNB). He proceeded to publish several architectural studies and served as an MP for a short period of time. Not in Jackson. COPAC lists 1 copy only (BL), to which WorldCat adds 2 (UCLA, Wake Forest).

First edition of this critical jeu d’esprit,First edition of this critical jeu d’esprit, a contribution to the debate over the Elegy inspired by Johnson’s assessment in his Life of Gray (1777) and which was to continue well into the nineteenth century. It includes the complete text of the Elegy on pp. xii-xx. Young was professor of Greek at Glasgow University.

First Dublin edition (the first London edition appeared in 1768). These poems marked a return to print for Hall-Stevenson after a few years’ absence, and draw on Aesop and La Fontaine for the purposes of political satire. Bute is a particular target. ‘The most ambitious and successful piece in the volume is a Mandevillian imitation, “A New Fable of the Bees,” continuing the attack on Bute, this time as the favorite of the Queen Bee, the Dowager Princess of Wales’ (Hartley). Also of particular interest is ‘The Black Bird’ (pp. 16–18), which is about Sterne. The title refers to the ‘Franciscan Makaronies of Medmenham’, i.e. Sir Francis Dashwood’s Hellfire Club. Jackson, p. 14; Hartley, ‘The works of John Hall-Stevenson: a check list’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 64 (1970).

First edition. William Woty (c.1732–1791) was a jobbing poet and literary editor with friends in high places: ‘Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, Tobias Smollett, and David Garrick are listed among the names of the many subscribers to [his] first collections, and Woty apparently had a strong interest in the London theatre … Later Woty published The Stage: a Poetical Epistle to a Friend (1780) and two short dramatic pieces: The Country Gentlemen, or, The Choice Spirits (1786) and The Ambitious Widow: a Comic Entertainment (1789)’ (Oxford DNB).

The subscribers’ lists here includes C. Churchill (10 copies; presumably the poet Charles Churchill), William Dodd, ‘the Macaroni Parson’ for whom Johnson famously tried to win a reprieve, John Wilkes (10 copies), and David Garrick.