Author: ASHBY (Samuel):
Title: Miscellaneous Poems. The Illustrious Friends; Address to Music and Poesy, &c. &c.
Description: London: Printed for W. Miller..., 1794. FIRST AND ONLY EDITION. 4to, 245 x 190 mms., pp. xiv [xv Contents, xvi blank], 158, including list of subscribers, recently rebound in quarter calf, raised bands between gilt rules, morocco label, marbled boards; text washed but remains of large stain (approximately one quarter of each leaf, lower left-hand corner) persist to about page 66. With the contemporary autograph of the M. P., Edward Monckton, one of the subscribers, on the title-page. Monckton also subscribed to Leigh Hunt's Juvenilia (1803). Ashby is unknown to ODND, but he was a native of Bungay, and many of the subscribers are from East Anglia. The poems include "Reply to the Goitre," "The Captive Fly," "The Anniversary of Belinda's Birth-Day," and concludes with "Address to Music and Poesy." One poem, "Event in Scotland," seems curiously mis-named, as it is a rape narrative, in which a Youth, who "glows with wild desire" pursues the daughter of Acasto, a Scottish laird (apparently), who, in repelling him, throws herself off a precipice to her death. Whether this alludes to an actual "event" (hence the title) or is intended to be an allegory in the manner of the next poems, "Bride-Cake; An Allegorical Vision" is unclear. ESTC T39429 locates copies in BL, Cambridge, Bodleian; American Philosophical Society, Princeton, Minnesota, Yale. OCLC adds Indiana and National Library of Australia.

Keywords: poetry provincial literature


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