[Rarebooks] fa: RICHARD BLACKMORE - ELIZA : AN EPICK POEM 1705 - Anti-Jacobite Allegory

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, along with other 17th, 18th & 19th-Century English titles,  
auctions ending Sunday, October 2. More details and images can be  
found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/arch_in_la/m.html?_trksid=p4340.l2562

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

Richard Blackmore: Eliza: an Epick Poem. In Ten Books. By Sir Richard  
Blackmore, Kt. M.D. and Fellow of the Colledge of Physicians in  
London. To which is annex’d, an Index, Explaining Persons, Countries,  
Cities, Rivers, &c. London: Printed for Awnsham and John Churchill, at  
the Black Swan in Pater-Noster-Row, 1705. FIRST EDITION. Folio (31.5  
cm; 12.5 in.) in period paneled calf, rebacked in modern calf, titles  
in gilt; [2] + 305 + [17] pp. ESTC T75146; Foxon B249.
An allegorical poem set in the time of Queen Elizabeth but clearly  
intended as an attack on Jacobites disloyal to Queen Anne. Richard  
Blackmore (1654-1729) was a wealthy physician and a passionate writer  
of rather stuffy polemical epics. He was satirized on both counts by  
his contemporaries. In The Dispensary, Samuel Garth derided  
Blackmore's opposition to a free dispensary for London's poor, and in  
the prologue of The Pilgrim, Dryden mocked him as "Quack Maurus",  
whose "Epic Songs" were "fustian stuff" scribbled in his coach as he  
traveled between patients.

Some wear and bumping to the edges of the boards; title-page with  
creases, chips and two short tears to the edges, front (blank)  
endpapers with creases and soling and tears to the fore-edges, leaf K2  
with a 1.5" closed tear to the bottom edge; a few very occasional  
small spots and stains; otherwise exceedingly clean and crisp, firmly  
bound. Lacking the publisher's adverts dated 1700 found in some  
copies. Engraved portrait of the author (possibly from Samuel  
Johnson's Lives of the Poets) tipped onto the front paste-down; front  
endpapers with the ornate early ownership signature of Samuel Wood  
(1748) and modern armorial bookplate of "Mortimer". A sound, handsome  
copy.