Author: STEVENS (George Alexander):
Title: The Choice Spirit's Chaplet; Or, A Poesy from Parnassus. Being a Select Collection of Songs, from The most approved Authors; Many of them Written and the Whole compiled by George Alexander Stevens, Esq.
Description: Whitehaven: Printed by and for John Dunn; and Sold by Messrs. Hawes, Clarke, and Collins, in Pater-noster-rOW, lONDON. 1771. FIRST EDITION. 12MO, 148 X 83 MMS.,, PP. [III] - X, 360 [361 Errata, 362 blank], contemporary sheepskin, leather label, lacks prelims and thus either blank leaf or half-title before title-page, text fingered and soiled, but a goodish copy with many of the errata corrected and the initials "D. D." on the top margin of the title-page. Both ESTC listings assert "This work was in fact not written or compiled by George Alexander Stevens (DNB)." Jeames Sambrook in his ODNB entry doesn't mention the work. Gerald Kahan in his 2008 book, George Alexander Stevens and the Lecture on Heads noted that while Stevens was travelling the country giving his lecture on heads, "He played at Whitehaven and while there spoke with a Mr. Dunn, who wished to publish some of Stevens's songs. This collection eventually appeared in 1771... [and] Stevens claimed the publication was unauthorized and rectified the situation with the publication of his Songs, Comical and Satyrical in 1772." This is the account given by Stevens: "A Paltry collection of Songs having lately made its appearance, in which the Publisher has, with uncommon Effrontery, prefixed my name as edition, and upon my disclaiming the imposition, has even had the Assurance, in a public Adverftisement, to assert that he had my Authority for so doing; although I have more Veneration for the Public, than either to trouble them, or load the Daily Papers with an Altercation between a little Country Shop-Keeper and a Ballad-Maker, yet I once for all beg Leave to state the real fact." Apparently Mr. Dunn printed songs that were textually flawed and added some of his own, attributingthem to Stevens. In fact, if one checks the texts to be found online of, for example, song 132, "Taste," on pages 170 - 171 of the present volume, attributed to Stevens, there are a number of textual differences. ESTC T124505, locating copies in BL (2) and Bodleian in these islands; and Buffalo and Eric County Public, Harvard, Huntington, McMaster, Library of Congress, and Kansas in North America; "with an initial errata leaf." ESTC T190572 adds a Dublin imprint ("Mr. Williams") to the London publishers: Bodleian and Yale, with "an [sic] final errata leaf."

Keywords: anthology songs literature


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