Author: FOULIS PRESS. [FOULIS (Andrew), ? editor]:
Title: Modern Poems: Selected Chiefly from Miscellanies Published Lately.
Description: Glasgow: Printed by And Foulis. M. DCC. LXXVI. 1776 12mo (in 6s), 120 x 70 mms., pp. [vi], 172, including half title, bound in quarter green calf, boards; front hinge slightly cracked, corners and binding worn; a fair copy. The printer and bookseller Andrew Foulis the younger (1756–1829) inherited the business of his father and uncle. He printed 103 editions between 1776 and 1800, but enjoyed nothing like the success of his father and uncle. Some of the authors of poems in this anthology are identified, but many are not. For example, John Logan is not identified as the author of "Ode to the Cuckoo," perhaps because in its initial appearance charges of plagiarism were made: it was published in Logan's Poems of 1771, with a second edition in 1772. This second edition, "touched off an intense controversy centring on charges of plagiarism, particularly in regard to the celebrated 'Ode to the Cuckoo' which Logan placed at the head of his book. 'Cuckoo' had also appeared in the 1770 volume of Poems on Several Occasions by Michael Bruce, whose family and friends were adamant that it was his. In the course of an unsuccessful attempt to block the sale of a reprint edition of Bruce's Poems in 1782, Logan, or his lawyers, claimed that he was the real author of 'Cuckoo' and a number of other poems in the 1770 volume, and this point was later supported by Thomas Robertson and Henry Mackenzie, among others. Several pamphlets and articles supporting Logan's authorship of 'Cuckoo' also appeared during the 1870 [sic, fr 1780]s, when the controversy was at its height, but since then the weight of scholarly evidence and opinion has favoured Bruce" (Richard Sher in Oxford DNB). Gaskell 605. Copies of this work, the fourth volume to be printed solely by Andrew Foulis, is less common that most Foulis Press imprints.

Keywords: poetry anthology prose Scottish


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