Select lessons in prose and verse, from various authors, designed for the Improvement of youth. To which are added, A Few Original Pieces

[2], 140pp. Without half-title. Contemporary gilt-tooled calf, contrasting red morocco lettering-piece. Extremities worn, upper board held by cords only. Marbled endpapers, very occasional chipping/short tears to margins, slight loss to lower corner of leaf I6 - touching text with some loss of sense. William St. Clair's copy, with his pencilled ownership inscription and manuscript note to FEP. The first Tamworth-printed edition of an anthology of improving prose and verse, initially published at Bristol in 1765. The selection includes, inter alia, poems by Addison, Pope, and Gay, and short prose extracts from the Spectator and the works of Tillotson and Burnet. The 'Original pieces' are ascribed, in earlier editions, to J.N. William St. Clair (1937-2021), British scholar and senior civil servant, notable as the author of The Godwins and the Shelleys, The Biography of a Family (1989) and The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (2004). All editions are remarkably scarce, with this being no exception; ESTC records copies at only two locations in the British Isles (BL and Oxford), and none elsewhere. ESTC T119230. Size: 12mo.…