Signed by the "Swan of Lichfield"
Monody on Major Andrè. By Miss Seward. (Author of the Elegy on Capt. Cook.) To Which Are Added Letters Addressed to Her by Major Andrè, in the Year 1769.
Lichfield: Printed and Sold by J. Jackson, for the Author, 1781.
Price: $1,500.00
About the item
Second edition (same year as the first). vi, 47, [1] pp. 1 vols. Small 4to. Signed by the "Swan of Lichfield" Later marbled wrappers. Fine. Adams 81-65b; Sabin 79478.
Item #212577
In the Fall of 1780 the young and dashing British officer, John Andrè, was arrested in civilian clothes, with a false passport, bearing reports from Benedict Arnold to General Henry Clinton on the vulnerabilities of the fort at West Point. His execution as a spy prompted great sympathy on both sides of the Atlantic. In the household of Anna Seward, the "Swan of Lichfield", where there was a close personal attachment to Andrè, a keenly felt outrage was directed at the bloodthirsty George Washington in this poem which has been reprinted innumerable times. Honora Sneyd (the mother of Maria Edgeworth) was a close friend of Anna Seward and Honora was romantically involved with Major André:
"Remorseless Washington! the day shall come.
Of deep repentance for this barb'rous doom!"
For this second setting of Seward's poem, the errata were corrected, and Hayley's laudatory poem, "To Miss Seward, Impromptu," was been added at pp. v-vi. This copy is signed in ink by the Seward ("Anna Seward") at the end of the poem, on p. 28.
