Fables and Other Pieces in Verse

The very scarce first edition of this collection of poetry and moral fables by a self-educated female Devonshire servant, published with the encouragement of Robert Southey and Anna Eliza Bray. The very scarce first edition of this work. Illustrated with a portrait frontispiece. A collection of poetry and moral fables by a self-educated Devonshire domestic servant Mary Maria Colling. Born into a labouring family in Tavistock, Colling developed a talent for poetry despite her limited formal education, attracting the attention and encouragement of the novelist Anna Eliza Bray and the Poet Laureate Robert Southey. The collection also includes an account of Colling"s life in a series of letters from Bray to Southey, offering an insight into the circumstances of a working-class woman writer in Georgian England. With a publisher's catalogue, dated November 1831, to the rear. With half title. Rebound in cloth, with endpapers renewed. This was Colling"s only published collection and represents an exceedingly rare example of nineteenth-century labouring-class poetry. Rebound in cloth, with endpapers renewed. Externally, fine. Internally, firmly bound. Spotting to frontispiece. Pages clean and bright, with only the odd spot. Very Good Indeed.…