First edition, scarce. The work was published for subscribers, apparently in an edition of around 250 copies:

First edition, scarce. The work was published for subscribers, apparently in an edition of around 250 copies:

"This Books can do---nor this alone; they give

New views to life, and teach us how to live".

Crabbe's hymn to bibliophilic order works as well today:

"Lo! all in silence, all in order stand,

And mighty Folio's first, a lordly band;

Then Quarto's their well-order'd ranks maintain,

And light Octavo's fill a spacious plain;

See yonder, rang'd in more frequented rows,

An humbler band of Duodecimo's …".

Although he had published Inebrity in 1775, by the early 1780s Crabbe was living in destitution, reliant on the "kindness of the wigmaker with whom he lodged" (CHEL). In desperation, he left some manuscript poems with Edmund Burke who was sufficiently impressed to oversee their publication. It was Burke who chose this as the first work to be published, and it was an immediate success.