Marrin's Bookshop

Synopsis

With biographical and critical prefaces by dr. aikin.

Item Description

FIRST EDITION. 8vo. 8.75 x 5.75 inches. vii + [i] + 807 pp. Text in double columns. Bound in contemporary half leather over marbled boards; spine in compartments with raised bands, decorated with gilt bands with contrasting title label, gilt. Extremities worn, including corners and edges. Some browning and neat repairs of page edges of first 20 pages. Armourial bookplate of Rolfsay family, and 1863 signature on first free endpaper. Decorated with engraved vignette title. 'The object of this work, which is entirely new, is to comprise, within a single volume, a chronological series of our classical poets, from Ben Johnson to Beattie, without mutilation or abridgement, with biographical and critical notices of their authors. The contents of this volume are so comprehensive, that few poems, it is believed, are omitted, except such as are of secondary merit, or unsuited to the perusal of youth.' First edition of an anthology of seventeenth and eighteenth century British poetry, including the works of Ben Jonson, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Swift, Thomson, Goldsmith, Gray, Johnson, Cowper and numerous others. Edited by John Aikin (1747-1822), a physician who gave up the practice of medicine in 1798 to devote himself to literary pursuits, including the editing of periodicals and the writing of biographies. A number of later editions, including in the US, appeared up to the 1850s.