[Preston, William]:

$2,750 · Offered by William Reese Company

SEVENTEEN HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-SEVEN: OR, A PICTURE OF THE MANNERS AND CHARACTER OF THE AGE. IN A POETICAL EPISTLE FROM A LADY OF QUALITY IN ENGLAND, TO OMIAH, AT ... Scarce socio-sexual satirical poem in which "a lady of quality" writes to Omai requesting more Polynesian men to satisfy the appetites of her European sisters. The poem reads: "Come, Southern youths! these happy feats explore, / New pleasures wait you on Britannia's shore." The author was a Dublin-born poet and playwright. The sexual overtones are complemented by the author's social commentary on British greed and love of luxury: "Two fiends with joint and sov'reign sway shall reign, / The love of pleasure, and the love of gain, / And full, and perfect, as in British soul, / Absorb all feelings, and all aims controul."Omai was the first Tahitian to visit England, arriving aboard the Adventure, one of the ships with Cook's second voyage. He was returned to the Society Islands by Cook in November of 1777, in the course of Cook's third and final voyage. "When the Adventure arrived in England Omai was taken under the wing of Joseph Banks who, along with Solander, presented him at court on 17 July 1774. He was received with such favour that he was granted a royal pension while in England. Shortly afterwards (possibly at the king's urging) he was taken by Banks and Solander to Baron Dimsdale in Hertfordshire to be inoculated against smallpox (the disease had killed Omai's compatriot, Aoutourou, the first Tahitian to vi

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