Author: DODD (William):
Title: The Beauties of History; or, Pictures of Virtue and Vice; drawn from Examples of Men eminent for their Virtues, Or infamous for their Vices. Selected for the Instruction and Entertainment of Youth. By the Late W. Dodd. The Third Edition . Ornamented with upwares of Thirty Engravings Beautifully cut on Wood.
Description: London: Printed by T. Malden...For Vernorn and Hood, E. Newbery, J. Cuthell; Darton and Harvey, J. Scatchard, Lacking, Allen & Co. and J. Walker. 1800. 12mo, 171 x 103 mms., pp. xxiv, 288, engraved frontispiece (by Stothard after Thomson), woodcut vignette on title-page, 48 woodcut head- and tail-pieces by Bewick and others, contemporary mottled calf, with binding skilfully restored, with old gilt binding and black leather label laid down; frontispiece and title-page foxed, some other light foxing, but a very good copy with the ownership inscription on the verso of the second front-free end-paper, "Martha and Mary Caster [?Caxton]/ Oxford Sept. 7th 1803." This edition was prepared by Stephen Jones. Dodd (1729 - 1777), aka "The Macaroni Parson," began his literary career with at Cambridge with Diggon Davy's Resolution on the Death of his Last Cow (1747), a poem on foot-and-mouth disease, which at least shows commendable prescience. Anticipating Mr. Micawber, he spent more than he earned, and eventually forged a bill of exchange for £4200 allegedly drawn on Lord Chesterfield. The forgery was discovered, he went to prison, and was hanged on 27 June 1777. The first edition of The Beauties of History was published in 1795, well after Dodd's death,but according to Stephen Jones in the preface, he had accumulated materials for an edition during his lifetime; this version has been extended and amplified, Roscoe, J94 (3).

Keywords: juvenile education prose


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