[LA PÉROUSE; BOTANY BAY] Poems, original and translated, by E. H. Smith, A. B., Incumbent of Killamarsh. / “Sweet heart-soothing poesie!”

A$1,450 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Foolscap folio (189 x 285 mm), full maroon calf (boards worn and scuffed), spine with gilt decoration; front pastedown with armorial bookplate with the motto VIRTUS INCENDIT VIRES and initials FLS below the coat of arms; manuscript in ink in the author s own hand, [6] 147 [5] pp; the preliminaries comprise a title leaf and 3-page index with date, place and title of each poem (the earliest date being 1821, the latest 1839); the first work (pp. 1-11) is The Philosophic Traveller or a Review of the Globe. A poem, translated from Bruguière de Sorsum, by Edward Herbert Smith , with the translator s preface explaining that it is his translation from the French of Bruguière s Le Voyageu r, with the exception of an extended section on Botany Bay, added by Smith himself; the translation is preceded by an Argument of the poem and followed by a Note on Lapérouse (pp. 12-13); it is dated at the foot of page 13: Caen, Septr, Cheltenham, October 1824 ; p. 14-152 are filled with a large number of Smith s own poems as well as translations from various French poets such as Desbarreaux and Lamartine; most works contain Smith s textual revisions and corrections; the manuscript is clean and legible throughout. French writer and linguist Antoine André Bruguière de Sorsum (1773-1823 ), who had spent some years travelling between France and the French Antilles, where he was managing his family s interests, published his poem Le Voyageur : discours en vers in Paris in 1807. It had been awarded secon

• Binding: Hardcover

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