[WOMEN]. Review of Poetry, Ancient and Modern. A Poem by Lady M******

London: Printed for J. Booth, 1799. 4to. 285 x 225 mm [10 ¼ x 9 inches].  2 preliminary leaves; 30 pp.  Stitched as issued.  Near fine copy, probably from a cache discovered in London in the 1990’s. 
Lady Manner (1766 or 77–1852) was an Anglo-Irish poet whose work was praised for its “purity and sentiment” and its “genuine pathos”.  This was the assessment of a reviewer in the British Critic and Quarterly Theological Review, established to counter the influence of the French Revolution on the English public. Manners was a member of the “Delphic throng” of women poets including Charlotte Smith, Anna Seward, and Mary Robinson, (truncated) whose popularity during the 18th century brought them a wide audience and considerable notoriety. She was married in 1790 to William Manners, Lord Huntingtower of Leicestershire, later Lord Tollemache, and had six boys and six girls over their thirty-three marriage.
The Review of Poetry is dedicated to her first born son Lionel.  The poem highlights the contrast between the “gay and childish air” of her son and “Gallia’s sanguinary race/Fixing in each savage mind/Hatred to the human kind—”.  Lady Manners goes on to quote many major poets from time immemorial on the theme of innocence and depravity, from Homer through Shakespeare, Milton, Johnson, and her near contemporary, the nature poet and romantic, James Thomson. 
This was her second publication, the first issued under the title Poems in 1793 and reissued due to demand the following year.  That same year Sir Thomas Lawrence painted a most revealing portrait of Lady Manners, whose  sensitive portrayal of feminine beauty was not appreciated in its day. Today it is considered one of the most renowned examples of English portraiture from the waning years of the 18th century.
Although few editions of Review of Poetry are cited in OCLC and NUC, there are numerous digital copies listed in American libraries.  
See The History of British Women’s Writing, 1750-1830, V. 5, (2010), edited by J. Labbe, pp. 321, 329.  Carolyn Day and Amelia Rauser: “Thomas Lawrence’s Consumptive Chic:  Reinterpreting Lady Manner’s Hectic Flush in 1794” Eighteenth Century Studies, V. 48, no. 4, pp. 455-74. . (Inventory #: 1273)