[Rarebooks] fa: WILLIAM HAYLEY - AN ESSAY ON EPIC POETRY (in Verse) - 1782

[ArCh]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, April 8. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/ybs5vcue

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA


William Hayley: An Essay on Epic Poetry; in Five Epistles to the Rev. Mr. Mason. With Notes. Dublin: Printed for S. Price, W. Sleater, J. Sheppard [et al], MDCCLXXXII [1782]. First Dublin edition (same year as the first London edition). Small 8vo (18.5 cm) in modern three-quarter calf and marbled boards, gilt-lettered morocco spine label; [4], 272 pp.; with the half-title. ESTC T90698.

Hayley’s study of epic poetry, itself written in the form of an epic poem. William Hayley (1745-1820) is best remembered as the friend and biographer of William Cowper and the patron of William Blake, but in his time he was himself a poet of some renown and was even offered the laureateship in 1790, but turned the honor down. This essay in verse is one of Hayley’s most substantial early efforts at critical writing and literary criticism, and is accompanied by an extensive section of scholarly and bibliographical notes at the end.

Contents with a very few light spots and touches of soiling, inked-out signature at the head of the title-page, early owner’s biographical note on the verso of the half-title, bookseller’s catalogue description tipped onto the front-pastedown, else clean and sound, firmly bound. With an intriguing and artistically executed presentation inscription on the front free-endpaper: “This Volume, discovered August 1st 1870 in Old Church St. Paddington, is humbly offered to William Page Esq. — the honored Proprietor of the Classic Demesne consecrated by the literary labors of Hayley, by his obliged friend Louis Fry.” The meaning behind the inscription was lost on us until we discovered a description of the village of Felpham in Kelly’s Directory of Sussex (1899), which reads in part: “In Turret House, near the centre of the village (now the residence of Mrs. William Page), William Hayley the poet died, 12th November, 1820, and was buried here..”