Quarto. 34pp. Modern gilt-tooled vellum-backed marbled paper boards, contrasting black morocco lettering-piece. A clean and crisp copy.

George Crabbe (1754-1832), poet and Church of England Clergyman. In 1781, having failed both in his career as an apothecary and in his attempts to secure patronage, Crabbe was living in destitution. In desperation he solicited Edmund Burke, who, taking pity on the impoverished poet, discharged his debts and gave him an apartment in his home at Beaconsfield. Burke himself took the manuscript of The Library to Dodsley, who agreed to underwrite the cost of publication and give Crabbe all of the profit. Crabbe sent his 250 subscriber's copies of The Library in lieu of a previously projected miscellany. The poem, organised by the subject classification of books in a library, is in the tradition of Juvenal's tenth satire and Johnson's The Vanity of Human Wishes. It was an immediate success, receiving remarkably favourable notices in the reviews. A second edition appeared in 1783.