GWYNNE, Horace, pseud. of James Augustus St John.

£450 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Abdallah; an Oriental Poem: in Three Cantos. First and sole edition of this very scarce collection of verse by the flourishingly named James Augustus St John, born James John (1795-1875), the son of a shoemaker, in what would become Dylan's Thomas stamping ground of Laugharne, Carmarthenshire. Abdallah is an interesting contribution to the Romantic oriental verse epic, a form popularisd by Tom Moore's wildly successful Lalla Rookh (1817) and Byron's equally fashionable quartet, The Giaour, The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair, and Lara. It is dedicated to the traveller James Silk Buckingham and opens, "Fair Asia's harp, whose sacred chords have given / Airs as the bulbul's sweet". Educated at the local charity school, in classics and modern languages by a neighbouring vicar, and an autodidact in literature, philosophy, and politics, John's "childhood poverty and an artisan background at the time of the Welsh corn riots led him into radical politics" (ODNB). Around 1818 he went to London, where he married, and was employed by the radical press. Following a move to the West Country he became editor of the radical newspaper, The Patriot, first in Plymouth and then at Exeter. Returning to London he "quietly became respectable" and for more than thirty years "contributed to the leading periodicals, mainly on politics and foreign affairs. He also published numerous original works, novels, biography, and history among them... [but] amassed no fortune from his considerable literary labou

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