Poems on Various Subjects.
London: Sold by Longman and Rees and J. Hatchard, 1803. First edition. Long subscriber’s list at rear (according to Jackson, the subscribers totaled 3,000). Edges of boards rubbed, old ownership signature, dated 1859. A very good copy. Contemporary blue boards, uncut and partially unopened, rebacked to style, with new printed paper label. Octavo. pp. 1-10, pp. 17-447. (Despite erratic pagination, the text is complete.). Item #13899
This is the first book of Anne MacVicar Grant (1755-1838), the Glasgow-born poet and author. Grant and her mother followed her father, a military man, to New York in 1758, and they remained there for ten years. She discusses her experiences in Memoirs of an American Lady (1808). In 1779, she married a clergyman named Grant, who was garrison-chaplain at Fort Augustus and minsiter of the parish of Laggan in Inverness-shire. Her husband’s death in 1801 left her penniless and in need of providing for her children, so she began a writing career. Her works include Letters from the Mountains; being the real correspondence of a lady between the years 1773 and 1807 (1807), Essays on the Superstitions of the Highlanders (1811), and translations of Ossian. Her literary friends included Scott, Lockhart, and DeQuincey.
Jackson, Romantic Poetry by Women, p. 137.
Price: $750.00