Author: CIBBER (Theophilus):
Title: The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland To the Time of Dean Swift. Compiled from ample Materials featured in a Variety of Nooks, and especially from the MS Notes of the late ingenious Mr. Coxeter and others, collected for this Design. In Four [Five] Volumes.
Description: London; Printed for R. Griffiths, at the Dunciad in St. Paul's Church Yard. 1753. FIRST EDITION. 4 volumes in 5 (as issued). 12mo, 163 x 98 mms., pp. [ii], ii, 354; [iv], 353 [354 blank]; [iv], 351 [352 adverts]; [iv], 356; [iv], 354, contemporary calf, red morocco labels, numbering labels in gilt; tops of some spines chipped, rare joint volume 5 slightly cracked, but a good to very good set, with the armorial bookplate of the John Pollexfen Bastard (1756 - 1816, Kitly House, on the front paste-down end-paper of each volume, and 20th century bookplate of Robert J. Hayhurst on the front paste-down volume of the first two volumes. The actor and playwright Theophilus Cibber (1703–1758) was the ninth child (and the only son to survive into adulthood) of the actor Colley Cibber (1671–1757) and his wife, Catherine Cibber, née Shore (bap. 1669, d. 1734), singer and actress. Although Cibber's name appears on the title-page, he was inn the debtors' prison at the time, and most of work was done by Robert Shiels (or Shiells or Shields). Boswell asserts that Johnson told him that Shiels was given ten guines to allow Cibber's name to appear on the title-page, while other records claim that Shiels was paid 70 pounds and Cibber 20 guines, The Thomas Coxeter (1689–1747) mentioned on the title-page was an English literary antiquary. In his Oxford DNB article on Coxeter, Graham Parry notes, "Another of Coxeter's schemes that failed to develop was a plan to make a collection of all the English poets who had published a volume of verse. Johnson and Boswell discussed this scheme on 18 September 1777, with Johnson recollecting that Coxeter had collected 'about five hundred volumes of poets whose works were little known; but upon his death Tom Osborne bought them, and they were dispersed, which he thought a pity, as it was curious to see any series complete' (Boswell, Life, 3.158). The Lives of the Poets (1753) compiled by Theophilus Cibber and Robert Shiels was heavily indebted to Coxeter's collection and his manuscript notes thereon."

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