[Rarebooks] fa: EDMUND WALLER - POEMS, &c. WRITTEN UPON SEVERAL OCCASIONS - 1711

[ArCh]

Auction ends Sunday, November 12. Images and more details can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

https://tinyurl.com/2967mnka

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA

Edmund Waller: Poems, &c. Written upon several Occasions, and to several Persons. By Edmond Waller, Esq; the Eighth Edition, with Additions. To which is Prefix'd the Author's Life. London: Printed for Jacob Tonson, at Shakespear's Head over against Catherine Street in the Strand, 1711. First edition thus; 8vo (20.5 cm) in early/period calf, later gilt-lettered spine label, marbled endpapers; [8], lxxxii, [6], 423, [1] pp.; with 10 engraved plates (including the frontispiece), woodcut decorations and initials. ESTC T145754.

The eighth edition overall, but the first to include the Life of Waller and these plates. Binding with rubbing and and some crazing to the leather on the boards, wear to the extremities and joints; contents with intermittent browning, a few occasional spots and bent corners, else clean and sound, firmly bound. Front paste-down with the engraved armorial bookplate of George Rous.

Edmund Waller (1606-1687), the author of these 'poems upon several occasions' was seemingly a poet for any and all occasions, writing, for example, two poems in praise of Oliver Cromwell and then, after the Restoration, another in praise of Charles II. When Charles asked why his poem was so much worse than the efforts on behalf of the Lord Protector, Waller famously replied, 'Sir, we poets never succeed so well in writing truth as in fiction.' Most of Waller's elegant verses are truly 'occasional' pieces, written to commemorate the events of the day, thus providing, in addition to their poetic virtues (Alexander Pope praised Waller for his 'sweetness'), a fascinating glimpse of eighteenth-century English history and society.