First published in 1733, the present is the first edition with almost sixty pages of additional poems “most of them semi-autobiographical” (ODNB). An eighth edition was published in 1767.
The first significantly expanded edition of Mary Chandler’s popular collection of poetry, published “to put an end to the troublesome Employment of writing out Copies, without disobliging my Friends”. The verse collected here is often autobiographical and reflects the life of single, disabled woman in Georgian England, the most striking example being, “My own Epitaph”, a raw portrait of her own life and the spinal deformity that affected her entire life (“Here lies a true Maid, deformed and old”).
Mary Chandler (1687-1745) was born at Malmesbury to a dissenting minister and his wife. A spinal deformity stopped her marrying and she instead set up a milliner’s shop in Bath while still a teenager. She was self-educated and encouraged by her friends to publish A Description of Bath in 1733 which went through numerous editions and was greatly expanded for the third edition of 1736.
“Although Chandler claims in her dedication to her brother John Chandler that she would rather be ‘taken notice of’ as an honest trader in business than as a writer, the many persons of title mentioned in her poems suggest that she was treated as more than a common tradeswoman. Despite the disadvantages of shape and station she was on familiar footing with a wide circle of neighbours and gentry, enjoying the hospitality and friendship of Elizabeth Rowe, Mary Barber, and the countess of Hertford, among others. Probably through their common acquaintance Dr Oliver, Chandler eventually met Pope, of whom she would boast that he ‘approv’d’ her lays” (ODNB).
Many of the poems gathered here discuss famous Bath residents (such as Dr. Oliver) but there are also many remarkable autobiographical poems, the most moving being, “My own Epitath”:
Here lies a true Maid, deformed and old;
Who, that she never was handsome, ne’er
Tho’ she ne’er had a Lover, much Friendship had met;
And thought all Mankind quite out of her Debt
[…]
She liv’d in much Peace, but ne’er courted Pleasure;
Her Books and her Pen had her Moments of Leisure.
Pleas’d with Life, fond of Health, yet fearless of
Believing she lost not her Soul with her Breath“ (p.40-1)
Provenance: Percival F. Hinton, modern bookplate on the front pastedown.
