[WOMEN'S LITERATURE FROM IRELAND]. Poems by Lady Manners. [ORIGINAL DRAB BOARDS]

London: Printed for John Booth et al., 1794. 8vo. (194 x 127 mm). 4 ff. (including a blank and the half title), 152 pp. Bound in original drab boards, edges untrimmed and unopened, unsophisticated (front hinge a trifle extended but otherwise perfect). A BEAUTIFUL COPY, VIRTUALLY PRISTINE INTERNALLY, THE BINDING BASICALLY IN UNSURPASSABLE ORIGINAL CONDITION.

The poems in this volume were written by an Irish aristocrat, Catherine Talmash, Baroness Huntingtower (1766/7-1852), a native of Lehena (County Cork), and a great Irish patriot. Her work shows that she was fond of literature of the Romantic as well as the Medieval era, and her contemplative poems are at times emotional, and at other times historical and a political in nature; for instance, she denounces the partitions of Poland, the first two occurring in 1772 and 1790 (the third one, in 1795, would have obviously been unknown to her at the time of writing).

The appeal of our copy is simply that it is preserved in what we hesitate to describe as "freakishly fine," practically unchanged from the moment of its first purchase.

Jackson, p. 212. (Inventory #: 4295)