1819 Human Life

Description

First Edition, Leather Binding, Scarce

A small section of Sims Read's 1984 catalogue is (removeably) tipped in to the front paste down which details another copy of this book in the same state for sale by the famous St. James bookseller at £75 - in 1984. The book has the attractive armorial bookplate of the Earl of Jersey (Middleton Park) as well as Eric's own bookplate. A very good copy of this scarce work. Samuel Rogers (1763 - 1855) was an English poet. Rogers was in effect a literary dictator in England. He made his reputation by The Pleasures of Memory when William Cowper's fame was still in the making. Alexander Dyce, from the time of his first introduction to Rogers, was in the habit of writing down the anecdotes with which his conversation abounded. From the mass of material thus accumulated he made a selection which he arranged under various headings and published in 1856 as Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers. His literary production remained slow. An Epistle to a Friend (Richard Sharp), published in 1798, describes Rogers's ideal of a happy life. This was followed twelve years later by The Voyage of Columbus (1810), and by Jacqueline (1814), a narrative poem, written in the four-accent measure of the newer writers, and published in the same volume with Byron's Lara. His reflective poem on Human Life (1819), on which he had been engaged for twelve years, is written in his earlier manner.