Author: [HOPE John)]:
Title: Occasional Attempts at Sentimental Poetry, By an Man in Business: With some Miscellaneous Compositions of his Friends.
Description: London, Printed for T. Durham, in Cockspur-street, near Charing-Cross. MDCCLXIX. 1769 FIRST AND ONLY EDITION. 8vo, 175 x 106 mms., pp. [v] vi - xvi, 168, including half-title, contemporary ms. correction in ink on page 90, contemporary mottled calf, glt border on covers, spine ornately gilt in compartments, fragment of label in one compartment, ex libris sticker of the Dutch poet Gerrit Komrij (1944 - 2012) on lower corner of front paste-down marbled end-paper; corners a little worn, but a very good copy. John Hope (1739–1785), was the grandson of Charles, first Earl of Hopetwoun. Hope's book was reviewed in the Novembe, 1769, issue of The Critical Review. The reviewer opens with a short commentary on the meaning of "sentimental," with the reviewer commenting, that it "seems to mean something different from description and narrative." He or she finds some of the poems "grossly indelicate" and "Some are not verse and some not grammar." With tongue firmly in cheek, he notes that he principal poem is a "northern pastoral on the death of the Earl and Countess of Sutherland, to the wonders of which we shall call our Readers attention, in a style, that, for time immemorial has been appropriated to the exhibition of wonderful things.... Gentlemen and Ladies we don't deceive you, the like is not to be seen in England." The Oxford DNB says of him that, "The majority of Hope's writing appeared in print after the end of his political career—although his first book of poetry and his first contributions to periodicals are dated as early as 1769. He wrote on a variety of contemporary issues in a wide range of genres, but was primarily an essayist and a poet. Almost all of Hope's work originally appeared unsigned, under his initials, or pseudonymously, in popular periodicals of the day—in the Public Advertiser (1769–72), Town and Country Magazine (1769–84), Westminster Magazine (1773–81, under the name The Leveller), and the Lady's Magazine (1776–8). Some of these contributions he later reprinted under his own name in his Thoughts in Prose and Verse Started in his Walks (1780). Pitcher notes, however, that Hope 'contributed more to the magazines than he cared to preserve' and attributes to him the anonymously published satire Sketches from Nature in High Preservation (1779) (N&Q, new ser., 45/1, 1998, 77–81). In this work, which went through fourteen editions in its first year in print, a sketch of 'John H—e, esq.' appears in two scenes, representing 'Patience' and 'Paul Writing to the Ephesians and Philippians, while Prisoner at Rome'. The Gentleman's Magazine also credits Hope with the authorship of the New Margate Guide (1780)." ESTC locates five copies: BL (2) and NLS; Princeton, Chicago, and Otago. There is also a copy at Stanford.

Keywords: poetry sentimentality literatire


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