Author: SEWARD (Anna):
Title: [Works]: The Poetical Works of Anna Seward: With Extracts from her Literary Correspondence. Edited by Walter Scott, Esq.
Description: Edinburgh: Printed by James Ballantyne and Co. Edinburgh; And Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, Pater-Noster-Row. 1810 FIRST COLLECTED EDITION. 3 volumes. 8vo, 184 x 108 mms., pp. [ii] - vi, ccvi [ccvii drop-title, ccviii blank], 187 [188 colophon]; [iii], iv - ix [x blank], [ii] - viii], 402, with the armorial bookplate of John George Hamilton of the front paste-down end-paper of volume, . UNIFORMLY BOUND WITH: Letters of Anna Seward: Written between the years 1784 and 1807. In Six Volumes. Edinburgh: Printed by George Ramsay & Company, for Archibald Constable and Company, Edinburgh; and Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, William Miller, and John Murray, London. 1811/ 6 volumes. 8vo, 148 x 108 mms., pp. [iii] xi [xii blank], 399 [400 blank]; [iii] - vi, 3999 [400 blank]; [iii] - vi, 397 [398 blank]; [iii] - vii [viii blank], 397 [398 blank]; [iii] - vii [viii blank], 432; [iii] - vii [viii blank], 490, xiv, with engraved portrait and folding facsimile in volume 1, engraved portrait of Thomas Seward in volume 2, engraved plate of Lichfield as frontispiece in volume 3, nine volumes bound in contemporary half calf, gilt spines, morocco labels, and the contemporary binder's ticket of J. McLaren/ Glasgow on the end-papers of three volumes, 9 volumes in all; a very attractive set. The poet and letter writer Anna Seward (1742 - 1809), aka "The Swan of Lichfield," came to literature early under the tutelage of her father, Thomas Seward (1708 - 1790), who taught her to read at an early age. Her father was a year older than Lichfield's most famous son, Samuel Johnson (1709 -1784). Anna had an uneasy relationship with Johnson, whose achievement were far greater than those of her father. Only after Johnson died she begin to publish her own writing. She had an even more interesting relationship with James Boswell: ODNB recors that, "a brief time, in 1784, Boswell and Seward had been on very friendly terms. Their confidential correspondence indicates that he was in 'a flutter' over their conversations and desired to have 'a lock of that charming auburn hair I admired so much the delicious morning I was last with you' (Heiland, 386). Rejecting the 'voluptuous inclination' suggested in Boswell's request, Seward eventually sent him the lock of hair on her own terms of a chaste friendship (ibid., 387)." Todd/Bowden 50A and 58a.

Keywords: poetry correspondence literature


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