Author: DOWNMAN (Hugh):
Title: Poems, The Second Edition, Altered and Corrected, With Several Additions.
Description: Exeter: Printed by R. Trewman and Son, For G. G. and J. Robinson..., 1790 8vo, 178 x 114 mms., pp. 256, ms. correction on page 179, contemporary mottled calf, spine ornately gilt in compartments to a fan motif, red morocco label, and numbering label "1" spine; joints cracked, corners worn, top of spine worn; the numbering label suggest that the volume was uniformly bound with other volumes, though there was never a volume 2 of Downman's work. The physician and poet Hugh Downman (1740 - 1809) published the poems in this volume in 1768 in The Land of the Muses, in Spenserian stanzas, and that poem begins this volume, though this time it appears also in rhyming couplets. The volume was reviewed in The Monthly Review for 1791, along with the fifth edition of his most popular poem, Infancy, or the Management of Children. The reviewer remarks, "Dr. Downman's poetry acquires its principal value from the plain and manly good sense with which it everywhere abounds, and which amply compensates for any occasional ruggedness in the metre." The Gentleman's Magazine commented that "The original poems in this collection, that of The Land of the Muses more particularly, do credit to Dr. D's genius and abilities, which the additional ones by no means tend to diminish." ESTC T92237 locates copies in BL, Devon and Exeter Institution Library, Exeter Central Library, Bodleian, Reading Univesity; and Harvard Houghton (2). WorldCat, however, locates a number of other copies in North America.

Keywords: poems spenserian literature


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