Poems.
Philadelphia: Printed for, and sold by Peter Stewart and George Hyde, 1788.
Price: $5,500.00
About the item
First American edition, predating M'Lean's New York edition by a few months. 304 pp. 1 vols. Sm. 8vo. Contemporary American sheep with red leather label, gilt bands on spine. Minor scuffing and rubbing to cover, chip to spine label, pages lightly and evenly tanned. Very good. ESTC W27705; Colby Library Quarterly p. 234 (which incorrectly lists the NY edition first); Egerer 5; Library Company of Philadelphia "First American Editions" p. 11; Lilly "Grolier 100 Books Famous in English Literature" 61; Shipton and Mooney 20991; Sabin 9407 (incorrectly calling for portrait). For the first edition: Egerer 1; PMM 231; Rothschild 555; Grolier One Hundred English 61. Provenance: ex-libris George Talbot Goodspeed.
Item #372498
The true first American editions of Burns’ Poems, and “very rare,” as Egerer acknowledges. “The honour of publishing the first American edition of Burns’s poem goes to Peter Stewart and George Hyde of Philadelphia. They did not issue any proposals for printing. Instead they determined to release an edition of the POEMS and let them sell themselves on their own merit: resorting to a form of advertising, common enough in the eighteenth century, they reprinted many of the forthcoming poems in The Pennsylvania Packet, from 24 Jul. 1787 to 14 Jun. 1788. The Philadelphia edition actually appeared on 7 Jul. 1788.” — Egerer. (The New York edition appeared on 17 Dec. 1788.)
Curiously, for lovers of GOLF, the book acquires a singular attraction when one reads, in stanza IX (p. 255) of the poem “A Fragment”: “But, word an’ blow, N-rth, F-x and Co, / Gowff’d Willie like a ba’, man”. The book's Glossary (p. 288) defines “Gowff” as follows: “Gowff, the game of golf; to strike as the bat does the ball at golf. Gowff’d, struck.” This is clearly a very early American mention of the game of golf.
