The Village: a Poem in Two Books.
London: J. Dodsley, 1783.
Quarto, with half-title and final blank; in later drab boards.
Improved by Dr. Johnson
First edition of Crabbe's best poem, an unsentimental homage to English country life. It was the work that confirmed his reputation and promise.
First edition of Crabbe's best poem, an unsentimental homage to English country life. It was the work that confirmed his reputation and promise.
Written in stirring heroic couplets, the poem was an implicit protest against the enclosure of common land by landowners. Mistakenly regarded as nothing more than a grim cataloguing of the ills of rural life, the opening to the second book is apropos: 'No longer truth, though shown in verse, disdain,/But own the village life a life of pain;/I too must yield, that oft amid these woes/Are gleams of transient mirth and hours of sweet repose'.
According to Boswell, Dr. Johnson not only read and approved the poem for Crabbe, but rewrote lines 15-18 and 20! One of Crabbe's earliest works, The Village was his first great literary success.
Courtney & Nichol Smith, p.155; Hayward, 195.
Condition Report: Text a little dusted, calf spine label chipped and partly defective.
Price (AUD): $625.00
US$436.32 Other currencies