Author: BOWLES (W. L.):
Title: The Grave of the Last Saxon; or, The Legend of the Curfew. A Poem.
Description: London: Printed for Hurst, Robinson, and Co.; and Archibald Constable and Co. Edinbugh. 1822. FIRST EDITION. Tall 8vo, 219 x 123 mms., pp. xi [xii Errata], 111 [112 colophon], sturdily rebound in quarter maroon morocco, linen boards, with library stamp in blind on front cover, and, and bookplate of Nottingham Reference Library on front paste-down end-paper. A good copy, with an emendation in pencil on page 37. The Church of England clergyman and poet Willilam Lisle Bowles (1762–1850) published his first volume of verse in 1789, Fourteen Sonnets Written Chiefly on Picturesque Spots during a Journey, which attracted the favourable attention of Coleridge, then seventeen years old. One of his best known works, an edition of Pope in 1806, which Byron attacked rather severely, led to an acrimonious dispute to which Bowles alludes in the preface to the above poem. The Eclectic Review in 1823 observed, "We have that respect for Mr. Bowles as an old acquaintance, that would lead us to speak as favourably as we can of his present production; but the truth is, that he has attempted something above his reach. This, in a young writer, would bespeak a commendable ambition: in a veteran, it indicates a mistaken estimate of his powers."

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