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[MONTAGU ( Mary Wortley ), Lady

Currency:EUR Category:Antiques / Books & Manuscripts Start Price:10.00 EUR Estimated At:1,000.00 - 1,800.00 EUR
[MONTAGU ( Mary Wortley ), Lady

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Auction Date:2012 Oct 20 @ 11:00 (UTC+1)
Location:38 Molesworth Street, Dublin, Dublin, ., Ireland
[MONTAGU ( Mary Wortley ), Lady, and GAY ( John )]. Court Poems. Viz; 1. The Basset-Table. An Eclogue. II. The Drawing-Room. III. The Toilet. A copy of verses to the ingenious Mr. Moore, author of the celebrated Worm-powder. All four by Mr. Pope. To which is added W.T. to fair Clio. Dublin : Reprinted by S. Powell, at the Sign of the Printing-Press, in Copper-Alley; for G. Risk, Bookseller, 1716FIRST IRISH EDITION, 24-pages, 12mo, nineteenth century half red calf over marbled boards, gilt lettered spine : a pleasant copy. First Dublin edition of a famous poetical spoof in which, according to ESTC “the greatest share. . . is that of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu." The poems themselves are on aristocratic lady gamblers, and on Princess Caroline, these two by Lady Mary with, apparently, some help from Pope and Gay, followed by Gay’s “The Toilet,” on an elderly beauty neglected by her lover, as the third eclogue. “W.T.” in the last poem is William Tunstall. Unlike the London edition’s title-page, this Dublin one attributes all four poems to Pope, taking its hint from the work’s preface, quoted below. The London edition’s “J. Roberts” imprint concealed the real publisher, Edmund Curll. Curll’s “Advertisement” at the beginning of the pamphlet teased the world with “a Word or two concerning their Author.” "Upon Reading them over at St. James’s Coffee-House, they were attributed by the General Voice to be the Productions of a Lady of Quality. When I produc’d them at Button's, the Poetical Jury there brought up a different Verdict ; and the Foreman strenuously insisted upon it, that Mr. Gay was the Man. . . Not content with these Two Decisions, I was resolv’d to call in an Umpire. . . who. . . return’d me the next Day ; with this Answer : Sir, Depend upon it, these lines could come from no other Hand, than the Judicious Translator of Homer". Pope thereupon took his famous revenge : in a chance encounter with Curll at Pope's publisher's shop, Pope first scolded Curll and then invited him to take a “Glass of Sack” as a gesture of good will. Pope put an emetic in Curll’s sherry - saving him “a beating by giving him a vomit,” as Pope put it - and within a couple of days Pope added insult to injury by publishing, under the anonymity of “a late Grub-street Author,” "A Full and True Account of a Horrid and Barbarous Revenge by Poison, on the Body of Mr. Edm. Curll'. Foxon, English Verse 1701-1750, p. 476, noting that “the authorship of these poems has been a problem ever since their publication.".ENGLISH PRE 1801; DUBLIN PRINTED; ENGLISH LITERATURE; VERSE; SOCIALISM; FRANCE; EUROPE; HISTORY; ; ; ;