Author: WHATELEY (Mary), later DARWALL:
Title: Original Poems on Several Occasions.
Description: London: Printed for R. and J. Dodsley..., 1764. FIRST EDITION. 8vo, 227 X 135 mms., pp. [2] 3 - 9 [10 blank, 11 - 34 subscribers, 35 - 36 Contents] 11 117 [118 blank], page 78 mis-numbered as 87, attractively rebound by Philip Dusel in period style sprinkled calf, spine ornately gilt in compartments, red leather label. A fine copy Mary Whateley (bap. 1738 - d. 1825) was the last-born child of Mary Beach and the gentleman farmer William Whateley. She came to public attention when she was 21 or 22 by publishing some poems in the Gentleman's Magazine in 1759. She married the widower John Darwall (1732 - 1789) in 1766, having published her first volume of poems, in 1764, and by the time of her marriage was well on her way to establishing a reputation as a poet. The Critical Review commented in 1764, "Miss Whateley begins this collection with a dedication to Lady Wrottesley, in which she modestly confesses her never having studiously ranged through the regions of imagination to seek for paths unexplored by former writers, but sat down content to employ her humble abilities upon such themes as friendship, gratitude, and native freedom of fancy, presented to her thoughts. Even her love-poems, she intimates, were written by a heart at ease, and that she only addressed Cupid as he happened to come in company with the rural muse. She goes on to assure us, that her pen was never prostituted to flatter a friend or a superior, or to gratify revenge; for she considered such meanness as unworthy talents consecrated to truth and virtue. Whoever has, in this manner, laboured to diffuse sentiments of benevolence, and to increase the moral duties, must in some measure succeed as a christian, whatever may be her success as a poet. But we would not be supposed to intimate that this lady owes all her reputation to the motives that impelled her to write; she owes much to her execution. An easy simplicity runs through this whole volume; and though it may want the vigour of manly sentiment, yet it possesses all the softer delicacies of her sex." ODNB asserts that the review was written by John Langhorne, "who wrote the preface to this volume." There is no preface in this copy, only a dedication; none of the copies in ESTC report a preface. Ann Messenger: Woman and Poet in the Eighteenth Century: The Life of Mary Whateley Darwall, 1738–1825 (New York: AMS Press, 1999).

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