Review of Poetry, Ancient and Modern by Lady Catherine Manners first 1799

MANNERS, Lady Catherine Rebecca Grey. Review of Poetry, Ancient and Modern. A Poem. By Lady M*****.
 
London: Printed for J. Booth, 14 Duke Street, Portland Place, 1799.
 
Quarto (230 × 300 mm). [4], 30 pp. Stab-sewn as issued in the original paper wrappers, uncut and entirely unbound, the original thread still intact; edges rough and untrimmed. A clean copy save for a few marks on page 1, some toning to the edges, with only light dusting and a faint patch of offsetting to the final leaf — an exceptionally well-preserved example in its original ephemeral state.
 
First and only edition of Lady Catherine Manners’s Review of Poetry, Ancient and Modern, a long reflective poem addressed to her son Lionel.
 
In this work she surveys the canon of poetic genius — from Homer and Shakespeare to Milton, Johnson and her near contemporary James Thomson. The poem turns from literary reflection to maternal instruction, urging a retreat from the corruptions of fashionable life toward virtue, reason and divine truth.
 
This was Manners’s second book, following Poems (1793), issued in the same year that Sir Thomas Lawrence painted her celebrated portrait (now in the Tate).
 
A rare survival in original form.