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A very neat collection of popular songs, most from the 1850s, of the sort circulated in ephemeral printed and manuscript song sheets. Highlights include: Est-ce le hatchich qui t’a mis comme ça: an uncommon reference to hashish in this context, and a song (in common with several others in the manuscript) for which we can find no printed source. Sung to the tune of ‘Aÿ chiquita’, this is a woman’s complaint to her suitor, with the chorus:

‘Est-ce l’absinthe, ou bien encore,
Le hatchich qui t’as mis, dis-moi,
Dans cet état que j’aborre,
Et tu veux m’aimer! Ah! Tais-toi.’

This is hardly Baudelaire, but a pleasing contemporary parallel to Les Paradis artificiels.

Others include Les Cris de Paris, Les Chemins de fer and Les Anges de la charité ou les inondés de 1856 and there are songs attributable to Pierre Dupont and Charles Durand, both popular in the 1850s and 60s. Some are in dialect and typically, the subjects tend towards love, drink and gastronomy, but there are also a couple alluding to the language of flowers. The compilation is scrupulously neat—and is presumably, in part, an exercise in penmanship.

Morison’s pocket edition of Dunbar commences with a Life of Gavin Douglas, from a manuscript then in the possession of the Literary and Antqiuarian Society of Perth. Not in Jackson or Johnson.

First edition of this patriotic poem on the Battle of Bussaco, 1810, in which the French were defeated by Anglo-Portuguese forces under Wellington (to whom the poem is dedicated). ‘The following poem was suggested by an evenings excursion, during the Autumn of 1810, upon the hills of Cintra, in which spot indeed many of the lines themselves were written’. George Grenville (1788-1850) of Carlanstown, Co. Westmeath became lord high commissioner of the Ionian Islands and was prominent in the cause of anti-slavery, parliamentary reform, and religious liberty. Jackson, Annals of English Verse, p. 362.

First edition. Edward Burnaby Greene (d. 1788) was variously a poet, translator, brewer and bibliophile. In 1765 he produced The Laureate, a poem in which Samuel Johnson was extensively abused. He was a prolific translator from the classics, though his version were rarely praised. One critic in 1782 remarked that ‘Greene's versions of Pindar, Anacreon, and Juvenal.. may all be seen “at Mr Brich's Pastryshop (late Horton's) opposite the Royal Exchange, and at all the principal Cheesemongers in London and Westminster”’ (cited in the Oxford DNB).

Delille’s French translation of Georgiana Cavendish’s best-known poem, The Passage of the Mountain St Gothard (1799) appeared twice in 1802: here, and in a separate edition with plates (also published by Prosper in London). It is unclear which appeared first. The poem was written during Georgiana’s exile, and the translation is preceded with reciprocal poems of dedication between author and translator.

Third edition (first 1771). Maude’s best-known work and a very popular poem, according to Aubin, who quotes from it extensively. The preface contains ‘his well considered observations on the nature of descriptive poetry... Like Crabbe, Maude fully realizes that the English bumpkin is too greatly harassed by cares to be the ideal poetic rustic.’ Jackson, p. 84. It occupies a curious place in the canon of works about Isaac Newton: apart from the plate depicting Newton’s paternal home, it represents the sole source for an oft-repeated anecdote of Newton’s rebuke to his pet dog Diamond (’Oh Diamond! Diamond! thou little knowest the mischief done’) for upsetting a candle and burning his papers (Gjertsen, The Newton Handbook, p. 177). The anecdote is almost certainly apocryphal. Aubin, pp. 367; Jackson p, 84.

First edition of Keate’s famous ‘ruin’ poem. ‘The Remains of Netley Abbey... are situated on the Side of the Southampton River, about three Miles from that Town... The grand and extensive Ruins which are still standing, added to the Beauty of the Scenery around them, much attract the Curiosity, and Admiration of Strangers’ (Advertisement). Aubin, Topographical Poetry, p. 353.

First edition. The subscribers include Samuel Johnson.

First edition of Symmons’s first work. ‘Inez, an anonymous tragedy of 1796 dedicated to Windham before it was withdrawn when Burke and the French Revolution “converted the object of my proud regard into the zealot of aristocratical and factious alarm”’ (Oxford DNB). Jackson, p. 208.

First edition. Edward Nairne (c.1742–1799), lawyer and customs official, was supervisor of customs at Sandwich, where he was born. From his light verse he was known as the ‘Sandwich Bard’. He died at Sandwich on 5 July 1799, and is not to be confused with his namesake (1726–1806) also with Sandwich origins, who was an instrument maker and natural philosopher. Poems includes ‘The Jews Partners and the stolen Pork’, ‘The Gipsies and the stolen Hog’, ‘The bartering Jew and the Lace Merchant’ and ‘Travelling; and an Account of a newly instituted Society of Antiquaries’. Jackson, p. 168; Johnson, p. 647. ESTC locates 8 copies only (BL, King’s Inns Dublin, Bodley, Leeds, NYPL, Lilly, Illinois, Otago).

First collected edition, the printing on ordinary paper; one of 500 copies (Bowyer Ledgers 4157).

First edition, privately printed: the long topographical work for which Mundy is best known.

Mundy was ‘a shy, recluse man, of rather a morbid temper; a great sportsman and an active magistrate... His poetical talent lay in the description of natural scenery...’ (Egerton Brydges, Autobiography). His most famous and most popular work, Needwood Forest, was first printed in 1776. Apparently written during a residence in the forest, it was inspired by the Enclosure Acts of the late eighteenth century, which allowed for Needwood’s successive disafforestation (though Mundy had himself been a petitioner for the Act of 1763). Though copies of the poem were apparently distributed only on request, Needwood Forest’s fame spread widely—there is a copy with extensive annotations by Horace Walpole at the Houghton Library—and brought him into the Lichfield circle of Erasmus Darwin, Anna Seward and Sir Brooke Boothby (all of whom were to exchange poems with him). The poem was soon reprinted in Lichfield, without Mundy’s consent. For his copy, inherited by his son, and bound with numerous autograph poems, see next item.

First edition. An elegant anonymous satire on fashionable dress for women, directed especially against the painful pursuit of an artificial figure: ‘Come here, you two girls, that look full in my face, / And you that so often are turning your back [the Graces], / Put on these cork rumps, and then tighten your stays / ‘Till your hips, and your ribs, and the strings themselves crack. / Can ye speak? can ye breathe? - Not a word - Then ‘twill do. / You have often dress’d me, and for once I’ll dress you.’ Jackson, p. 59.

First collected edition, with 4 engraved vignettes by Blake after designs by Thomas Stothard. The Bradley Martin copy. Jackson, p. 96; Keynes 94; Russell 48.

First edition, rare. A delightful, if obscure, ornithological satire, presumably disguising a literary or academic controversy as yet unidentified. With a supporting cast of bat, owl, hawk, rook and crow, the poem centres on whether a particular bird is rock-dove or jay:

‘This is no Jay, no carrion bird:
Such meekness, softness, sweetness, cadence!
Such graceful gesture, tone and gradance!
For Postulatum, Theme, or Theorem,
I never knew a Dove come near him’. Not in Jackson. ESTC: BL, Cambridge, Bodley and Newberry only and a single copy of a 15-page issue of the same year (Duke).

First edition, extremely scarce, of this provincially printed verse compendium by the Yorkshire poet Octavia Stopford Crosthwaite.
In her Introductory ‘Verses to the Reader’, Stopford promises ‘simple weeds, in sombre hues’, but her poems reveal strong opinions, forcefully expressed. Perhaps most revealing is her acerbic comment on contemporary mores, ‘Fashion in 1825’:
Some do not rise till noon, and dine at night,
Then in full dress appear,—in robes so light
That naked arms and bosoms are a sight,
Unblushing shown by fashion!
She lampoons foppishness as evidenced by ‘Trowsers so wide, like bolsters on our beds’, and offers an insight into fashion both sartorial and social:
The waltz, quadrille, Der Frieschutz, fill the hours,
With strains Italian; — classifying flowers, —
And lectures philosophic, speak the powers
Of Ladies in the Fashion.
A curious footnote refers to the huge cost of a music festival at York Minster, and the poem is a mine of wry contemporary observation. The lengthy list of subscribers suggests that her readership was predominantly based in the North-West of England, and includes the volume’s dedicatee Sir William Foulis. COPAC records three copies only, at the British Library, Cambridge, and York. Not in Johnson; Jackson, Women p.319.

First edition, scarce.
Richardson’s Preface contains the usual diffident protestations of amateurishness, but she is moved to publish because, as she rather beautifully explains, ‘Poetry is the spring-touch that calls into action all the finer feelings of our nature’. The volume includes plenty of studies of nature, but perhaps most interesting is the threnody lamenting the death of poet Letitia Elizabeth Landon (see item 14)—prefaced with a stanza from Landon’s ‘Polar Star’—which refers sorrowfully to her early death and the loss of her poetic potential; Richardson was evidently an ardent fan. Other contemporary figures are memorialised, and three of her poems deal with the death of William IV and the accession of the young Victoria. COPAC lists copies at the British Library, Bodley, and Cambridge only. Not in Jackson, nor Jackson, Women.

An otherwise unrecorded memorial poem, subscribed ‘East Bergholt’ and probably printed locally in Suffolk.

First edition of this combination, preceded by an exceptionally rare issue of the first poem (Elcho castle; or, Edmund & Velina: a tale. Sterling, 1796 known in a single copy, at Toronto). Jaffray was a native of Sterling and this elegant publication is dedicated to his former teacher, one David Doig, ‘Rector of the Grammar School, Stirling, author of Letters on the Savage State, Poem on the View from Sterling Castle, &c. &c.’ The two charming sepia illustrations depict highland scenes. A footnote explains the setting of the first ballad: ‘ELCHO CASTLE is situated upon the banks of the river Tay, a few miles below the town of Perth; and is now the property of the Earl of Wemyss. It is frequently mentioned by Blind Harry, in his life of Sir William Wallace; and in those days it must have been a place of considerable strength.’ Jackson p. 217. ESTC lists copies at BL, Cambridge, NLS, Harvard and Yale only.

[bound with:] -------- The unsex’d Females: a Poem, addressed to the Author of The Pursuits of Literature. London: Printed for Cadell and Davies. 1798. pp. 37, [1], Jackson, p. 230;

[and after:] TOWNSHEND, Thomas. Poems... London: Printed by T. Bensley, for E. and S. Harding... 1796. pp. vii, [1], 112,, 14 engraved headpieces and 14 tailpieces, all after Thomas Stothard, but bound without the engraved plate. Jackson, p. 211.

3 works bound in one, 8vo (180 × 105 mm); contemporary tree calf, spine gilt with red morocco label; some neat later pencil annotation.

An exceptionally pretty verse miscellany, containing first editions of both the Polwhele works. The Cornish writer’s Grecian Prospects is by the far the rarest item here, with ESTC locating copies at Bodley, Exeter College (Oxford), Columbia, Harvard and Huntington anly (plus two copies of a variant London issue of the same year). The introductory analysis explains the poem’s ambitious premise: ‘A Welsh bard, in the isle of Lesbos, is enamoured with an extensive and beautiful prospect, which he contemplates till the approach of night... He then laments the ruins of art at Athens, Corinth, Sparta, and the Grecian isles, Delos, Teios..... imagines nature languishing from neglect in sympathy with art...’ Grecian Prospects is without the advertisement leaf found in the Bodley copy, it is not present in either the Harvard or Huntington copies.

The Unsex’d Females debates (in verse) the role of women in society and is addressed to satirist and Italian scholar Thomas James Mathias (’Author of The Pursuits of Literature’). It is a stinging anti-feminist attack on ‘a female bank, despising NATURE’s law’, with a bitter and personal diatribe against Mary Wollstonecraft (which draws heavily on Godwin’s Memoirs which Polwhele had reviewed for the Anti-Jacobin). Barbauld, Mary Robinson, Charlotte Smith, Helen Williams, Mary Hays, Hannah More, Elizabeth Montagu, Fanny Burney and Anna Seward are also mentioned. It was reprinted by Cobbett in New York in 1800.

Opening the volume is the 1796 edition of Townshend’s Poems, the first to include the sequence of charming vignettes after Stothard (it had appeared unillustrated in a Dublin edition of 1791..