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First edition of this translation and with the striking large engraved plates by Lady Diana Beauclerk. The artist was the eldest daughter of Charles Spencer, third duke of Marlborough. ‘Lady Di, as she was familiarly known, grew up at Langley Park, Buckinghamshire... There she enjoyed a happy upbringing, her taste for drawing developing early under the influence of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ (Oxford DNB). Her second marriage to Topham Beauclerk brought her into the orbit of Edward Gibbon, David Garrick, Charles Fox, Edmund Burke, and others. Her work — often in the gothic taste — was admired by Horace Walpole who commissioned seven large panels in black wash illustrating his tragedy, The Mysterious Mother, which he hung in a special hexagonal closet at Strawberry Hill (six of them are now at the Lewis Walpole Library, Farmington, CT). She also produced designs for Josiah Wedgwood.

A popular commonplace book verse in the nineteenth century, it was included in The World’s Best Poetry in 1904 with the caption ‘The MS. of this poem, which appeared in 1820, was said to have been found in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, in London, near a perfect human skeleton. It was published in the Morning Chronicle. The author was never discovered, although a reward of fifty guineas was offered.’

‘BEHOLD this ruin! ’Twas a skull
Once of ethereal spirit full.
This narrow cell was Life’s retreat;
This space was Thought’s mysterious seat.
What beauteous visions filled this spot!
What dreams of pleasure long forgot!
Nor hope, nor joy, nor love, nor fear
Has left one trace of record here...’

Third edition. with new illustrations. Originally divided into six delineations (1805), two were added in the second edition (1806). Jackson attributes the present work to one William Mackenzie, though it was advertised in the Monthly Magazine as being by a J. Mackenzie in 1817. Reviews were generally lukewarm, the Critical Review dismissing it as a bit of female fluff: ‘Its title its passport, this poem will probably form part of the furniture of many a lady’s dressing-room. With that let the author be content.’ As if to further this point, the only positive review we were able to locate came from The Lady’s Monthly Museum, which stated that the little volume ‘exhibits great elegance of taste, and warmth of feeling … and has many pathetic and beautiful passages.’ Jackson, p. 345. COPAC lists 4 copies (Bodley, BL, Cambridge, NLS), to which WorldCat adds 3 (McMaster, NYPL, Toronto).

First edition of the ‘Ettrick Shepherd’s’ first major success, the work which placed him on a par with Scott and Byron as fashionable poets of the 1810s. In dialect throughout, the poem imagines a return to Scotland of Mary Queen of Scots, and a poetical contest (the ‘Wake’) held in her honour at Holyrood. Jackson, p. 371.

First edition. The collection is mostly juvenile and is introduced with the poem ‘Adieu to Harrow’. The delightful plates are by Isaac Cruikshank, father of George. Jackson, p. 204.

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 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 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).

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.

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.

A miscellany containing 8 scarce Dublin-printed editions of popular British verse, most with the imprints of members of Dublin’s ‘Company of Booksellers’, the fraternity constituted some time before 1774, probably in response to the ‘perpetual copyright’ controversy. I. Not in Jackson. II. Jackson p. 53. III. Jackson p. 49. IV. Jackson p. 53. V. Jackson p. 43. VI. Jackson p. 45. VII. Jackson p, 54. VIII. Jackson p. 46.