Pursuing “consolation for the loss of his stepdaughter in 1736 and his wife and son-in-law in 1740, Young wrote The Complaint, or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality (1742–6), arguably the century’s greatest long poem. Its nine ‘Nights’, issued serially in quartos tending to greater length, total nearly 10,000 lines of blank verse. The first of these maintain the quasi-autobiographical fiction of a nocturnal speaker lamenting the loss of child, spouse, and friend and finding Christian consolation.” (ODNB).
“With the first Nights immensely popular (Nights 1–5 all quickly required multiple editions), Young was induced to restate copiously and refine his points, overextending the work until its popularity fell off, though recent criticism has focused on these later Nights. Over 100 collected editions of the Night-Thoughts were published in the next five decades, including translations in most European languages, many in German. […] read closely by Wordsworth and Coleridge, the poem remained popular among middle-class readers well into the 1800s.” (ODNB).
The title page for the fourth part is bound in at the front of this copy, it being the “general” red and black title page which was probably intended to be prefixed to collections when the fourth part was published.
Thomas Hammond Foxcroft’s book plate to front paste-down.
A good copy, boards and hinges rubbed and scuffed, corners bumped, and hinges rubbed.
