The Percy Letters: The Correspondence of Thomas Percy and Robert Anderson - Hardcover

Percy, Thomas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300038143 ISBN 13: 9780300038149

Publisher: Yale University Press, 1989

Synopsis

Dr Percy's first work, 'Hao Kiou Choaan, or The Pleasing History', was published in 1761. This is a heavily revised and annotated version of a manuscript translation of the Haoqiu zhuan (好逑傳), and is the first full publication in English of a Chinese novel. The following year, he published a two-volume collection of sinological essays (mostly translations) entitled 'Miscellaneous Pieces Relating to the Chinese.' In 1763, he published Five Pieces of Runic Poetry, translated from the Icelandic. The same year, he also edited the Earl of Surrey's poems with an essay on early blank verse, translated the Song of Solomon, and published a key to the New Testament. His Northern Antiquities (1770) is a translation from the French of Paul Henri Mallet. His edition of the 'Household Book' of the Earl of Northumberland (1770) (The Regulations and Establishment of the Household of Henry Algernon Percy, the Fifth Earl of Northumberland, at his Castles of Wresill and Lekinfield in Yorkshire. Begun anno domini M.DXII) is of the greatest value for the illustrations of domestic life in England at that period. These works are of little estimation when compared with the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765). In the 1760s, he obtained a manuscript of ballads (the Percy Folio) from a source in Northumberland. He had in mind the idea of writing a history of the Percy family of the peerage (the Dukes of Northumberland), and he had sought materials of local interest. He had sought out old tales from near Alnwick, the ancestral home of the Northumberland Percy family, and he had come across many ballad tales. In 1763, Percy, aiming for the market that Ossian had opened for "ancient poetry" (see James MacPherson), published Five Pieces of Runic Poetry from Icelandic, which he translated and "improved." Percy was a friend of Samuel Johnson, Joseph and Thomas Warton, and James Boswell. In 1764, Dr Johnson and others encouraged Percy to preserve the poetry he was finding at home.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0300038143
• ISBN 13: 9780300038149
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384
• Editor: Anderson W. E. K.