Author: OLDHAM (John):
Title: The Compositions in Prose and Verse of Mr. John Oldham. To which are added Memoirs of his Life, and Explanatory Notes upon some Obscure Passages of his Writings. By Edward Thompson.
Description: London: Printed for W. Flexney..., 1770. 3 volumes. 8vo, pp. viii, lxxx, 116; [ii], vii [viii blank], 192; [ii], 182, including half-title in volume 1, contemporary calf; spines rubbed and dried, covers detached. With the armorial "Mirehouse" bookplate on the front paste-down end-paper of each volume; possibly from the library of James Spedding (1808–1881), literary editor and biographer, born at Mirehouse in Cumberland. Thanks to the scholarship of H. F. Brooks, the poetry of Oldham (1653–1683) has enjoyed something of a rehabilitation since 1987 when Brooks and R. Selden published a critical edition of his poems. The editor of these volumes, Edward Thompson (1738?–1786) was a naval officer and author; his early publications, The Demi-Rep (1756) and The Meretriciad (1763), were well received, and in the same year that he published the above edition of Oldham, he re-published those two pieces along with some others in The Court of Cupid. Copies are fairly plentiful in UK libraries, but ESTC T135581 locates only 5 copies in North American Libraries: Chicago, Kentucky, Minneapolis Public, Harvard, and Library Company of Philadelphia; but there are doubtless numerous others.

Keywords: poetry biography literature


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