The poems of Mark Akenside, M.D.
Dublin: James Williams, 1772. 12mo. viii, 288 pp. FIRST DUBLIN EDITION. Full contemporary calf, worn and chipped at edges, head and foot of spine; minor browning and spotting. Ownership inscription and stamp of Skaneateles Library Association on end-paper. Item #11570
First Dublin edition of this collection, printed in London the same year. Edited by Jeremiah Dyson, Akenside’s lifelong friend, this work contains a complete collection of his poems, “either reprinted from the original editions, or faithfully published from copies which had been prepared by himself for publication.” Akenside, a butcher’s son who originally studied theology before switching to medicine, rose to prominence both as a physician and a poet. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and served at St. Thomas’s Hospital. Among his works included here are The pleasures of the imagination (1744), the neoclassical Odes on several subjects (1754) and the Epistle to Curio (1744), a vigorous political satire. Akenside’s conversion from Whig to Tory principles at the accession of George III earned him the appointment of Physician to the Queen.
Price: $350.00