first edition Early paper wrappers, a bit foxed and creased. Lacking the half-title. Some foxing within and some staining to last few leaves.
[1779] · Bristol:
by [ Steele, Mary ].
Bristol: Printed by W. Pine, [1779] First edition. Date from volume three of Timothy Whelan and Julia B. Griffin's Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720 – 1840 (2011). Note that OCLC records show various publication dates from 1775 to 1780, but the 1779 date provided by Whelan and Griffin seems to be the most reliable. Early paper wrappers, a bit foxed and creased. Lacking the half-title. Some foxing within and some staining to last few leaves. . Quarto. A very good copy of one of the author's few published works. OCLC and ESTC record twelve copies in the United States: Cornell, Yale, the Huntington, NYPL, the Newberry, U Chicago, Case Western, University of Cincinnati, University of Illinois, University of Iowa, Wellesley, University of Colorado. Jackson, Romantic Poetry by Women, p. 316 (misattributed to Anne Steele). Danebury, a 250-line narrative poem in heroic couplets, is the major work of Nonconformist poet Mary Steele, later Duncombe (1753 – 1813). A manuscript collection of Steele's poetry at Oxford contains the poem, with the annotation that she wrote it when she was only fifteen. Steele published only a few of her poems during her lifetime, and her remaining works, 139 poems and 137 letters, were not published until Steele's inclusion in Whelan and Griffin's Nonconformist Women Writers (2011). Steele was the niece of the influential Baptist poet Anne Steele (1717 – 1778), "one of the first British women hymn writers, and the first to become widely known" (Oxford DNB). According to Whelan, Mary was well regarded as a writer and shared "a collaborative and communal…artistic connection" with her aunt (Other British Voices, p. 24).
(Inventory #: 17763)