Author: BEAUTIES.
Title: Beauties in Prose and Verse, Selected from the Most Celebrated Authors, Antient and Modern, viz. Blair, Goldsmith, Sterne, Percival, Aikin, Brooke, Gessner, Drummond, Pliny, Robertson, Cicero, Jenyns, Fordyce, Johnson, Harris, Collins, Carter, Moore, Cunningham, Shenstone, Merrick, Cotton, Greville, Addison, Parnell, Melmoth, Gray, etc. With some Original Pieces. The Whole Calculated to Exhibit the most striking Pictures of Virtue and Vice to the Minds of Youth.
Description: Stockton: Printed and Sold by R. Christopher. 1783. FIRST EDITION. 12mo, 175 x 98 mms., pp. xii, [13] - 300, including half-title, later full calf, spine blocked in gilt; ex-library, Winchester Public Library, "Withdrawn," two library labels before half-title, library stamp on verso of title-page, and small circular library stamp on top margin of page [13]. The concept of "beauties" as applied to extracts from poetry and prose suitable to be anthologized for the moral benefit of youth or the entertainment of adults seems to be one that began to be popular in the mid 18th century in Britain. In the Preface the compiler asks why another anthology is needed when there are so many on the market, answering that "there cannot be too many books adapted to purposes so laudable; and it is evident from the dictates of reason and nature, that the Youthful Mind is fond of novelty." He or she extolls the size of the type and the quality of the paper, and Hugh Bair's position at the beginning of the list of authors represented in the anthology is due to his "great ability in literature, [which] aRe too well known to need any encomiums." ESTC T188139 lists this as one of the two copies it locates; the other is in the Bodleian. There are also copies in the BL and NYPL (OCLC listing is mis-dated 1873).

Keywords: anthology poetry literature


See more books from our catalog: Anthology