Poems by Gray John: Signed (2 results)

Paper-covered Boards. Condition: Good. No Jacket. Original paper covered boards - mellowed formerly white cover with Oxford panel drawn on. Boards a little darkened. Backstrip missing. With frontis and vignette title, plus letterpress title page. Clean throughout. This volume is dedicated by the author and philologist Dr John Jamieson "the the young ladies of Bemersyde from their faithful servant and friend John Jamieson". Rare with original author's inscription. Signed by Author(s). Book.…

8vo, pp. [iii]-xx, 90; wanting the half title; and title page very dust-soiled; disbound. First edition. The preface spins a tale about how the 'editor' discovered this work on waste-sheets which had been used to wrap up some books ordered from Ireland (that is, books at a much cheaper rate than he would have to pay if bought in England), and he suggests that they might be part of Johnson's original criticism of Gray's Elegy, 'but afterwards withdrawn'. Imitation of Johnson, which would be hard (and, I think, pointless) to maintain over nearly a hundred pages, is occasionally successful: 'Of poets who had wrought on the subject before him, either incidentally or from purpose, he seems to have followed no one completely as a model, but to have gathered occasionally from all' (pp. 5-6). I am not clear who this John Young was: the preface is signed from Lincoln's Inn, 15 January 1783, so he may have been a barrister but that too could be a blind. Northup 1031.…