TRAHERNE, Thomas.

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The Poetical Works; Centuries of Meditations. First editions, printing Traherne's poetry for the first time following the rediscovery of his original manuscripts in the 1890s. The first editions were printed in small numbers: 600 copies of The Poetical Works, 150 of Centuries of Meditations.The divine Traherne (c.1637-1674) published only one book in his lifetime, the polemical treatise Roman Forgeries (1673). Two further prose tracts followed in the years after his death and passed with little notice. "Traherne would have sunk into oblivion had it not been for the extraordinary rediscovery of his manuscript writings which took place during the twentieth century. This story began in winter 1896-7 when W. T. Brooke purchased two manuscripts, Centuries and a folio volume containing poems and a commonplace book, from two London book barrows for a few pence. Thought at first to be by Henry Vaughan, they were subsequently identified as Traherne's through the detective work of Bertram Dobell", who published the present editions (ODNB). Since then, nine further manuscripts have been discovered, the most recent in 2024.In his introduction to the Poetical Works, Dobell compares Traherne to Herbert and Vaughan, but praises his singularity as "one who draws his inspiration from sources either peculiar to himself or made his own by the moulding force of his own fervent spirit" (p. xviii). Traherne's poetry has since been characterised as metaphysical and proto-Romantic, and likened to th

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