TONNA, Charlotte Elizabeth.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Poems founded on the Events of the War in the Peninsula. By the Wife of an Officer. First and sole edition, privately printed for the author and consequently rare; this copy is presented in an attractive period red morocco. The "officer" mentioned in the title was the author's first husband, George Phelan, an Irish army captain who saw action throughout the Peninsular War.Tonna (1790-1846), writer and social reformer, dedicates her book to Wellington and follows this with a 4-page poetical address to him. Pages 1-24 comprise "A Sketch Written in the Year 1814", the war's final year, a flavour of which can be sampled by these lines: "While Beresford, Hill, Stewart, Alten, Cole / Picton, and Clinton, like deluge roll, / Again the Gaul, in obstinate despair, / Pauses and hovers on the heights of Aire; - / But ill may Soult brave Stewart's arm sustain, / That checked his pride on Albuera's plain, / And hurls with practised might the withering bolt amain" (p. 19).The remainder of the book comprises "The Convent Bell", a long poem in seven cantos which tells the story of "a group of British soldiers that, after the victorious battle of the Douro under Wellington, seek food and shelter in the secluded convent of Saint Clara, before they move on to Talavera in Spain. It is there that their wounded Irish commander falls in love with a beautiful and noble Portuguese nun; an ill-fated romance that ends with the death of the hero in the battlefield and of the grieved nun in the convent"

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