Juvenile Essays, In Verse, With Notes, Critical and Explanatory.

£850 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

Rare. No copy in the British Library . Copac records a single copy at Bodley. OCLC records copies at Stanford and Florida State only in the USA. A collection of miscellaneous literary works (“written mostly at school”), self-published by a future lawyer, colonial administrator, and slave-owner - and containing his reflections on slavery, emancipation, and empire. This text is a miscellaneous collection of short literary works, including plays, poems and epitaphs. Much of the text is taken up with a Roman tragedy which positions itself as a sequel to the well-known rape of Lucretia. The other works cover a wide range of themes, including bucolic pastoralism - as in the poetic “Boast of Avon” - and colonial violence - as in the verses “Occasioned by the indiscriminate Massacres at St Domingo”. Throughout the text, the author provides his own editorial footnotes, as well as brief and fantastically self-confident discussions on contemporary politics and moral rectitude. Published anonymously but attributed to the 19-year old, Fortunatus William Lilley Dwarris (1786-1860). Dwarris was a lawyer, civil servant and writer (see ODNB ). At the time of publication, Dwarris was either eighteen or nineteen, and had completed his first year at University College, Oxford. As the title page notes, Dwarris published the text himself. His choice of a Warwick-based publisher might appear unusual for one so well-connected, but his maternal family had extensive roots in Warwickshire, and he had f

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