{"product_id":"poems-i9co5x65","title":"Poems,","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eRare.\u003c\/strong\u003e OCLC records copies at \u003cstrong\u003eBritish Library\u003c\/strong\u003e and \u003cstrong\u003eBodley\u003c\/strong\u003e; \u003cstrong\u003eUniversity of Illinois\u003c\/strong\u003e and \u003cstrong\u003eNew York Public Library\u003c\/strong\u003e (Later quarter dark green cloth, “Front free endpaper lacking. Hinges cracked, corners frayed, covers dirty. Foxed and dust-stained.”). Other than the present copy - which was bought for practically nothing in a Forum online only auction in July 2026 - no other copies are recorded on Rare Book Hub.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA very handsome copy of James Jennings’s privately printed first collection of verse which includes references to his friends Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey as well as a discussion of the African slave trade and a note on his fellow Bristol poet Thomas Chatterton.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJames Jennings became familiar with Coleridge and Southey when he was apprenticed to a Bristol apothecary in 1786 and became part of the fledgling radical movement in Bristol at that time.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Although they were not close friends, he [Jennings] and Southey corresponded (the correspondence has not survived) and remained in contact until c.1828. Jennings was a great admirer of Southey’s writing, but the admiration was not reciprocated. Southey nicknamed him ‘poor Trauma’ and ‘the traumatic poet’, though he admired Jennings’s ‘moral character’. Jennings shared Southey’s interest in educational methods, and in 1813, in collaboration with the local rector at Huntspill, established a school conducted on Lancaster and Bell’s monitorial systems”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJennings literary debt to Southey (and many of the other Romantic poets) is clear in this volume but there are also a number of other interesting poems such as “A Castle Built in the Air, Beneath a Grove of Lofty Hemlock Trees, on the Banks of Geagu River, near Lake Erie, North America” and various verses on his son who died aged 4. The extensive notes at the end describe Coleridge as “the Author of a Volume of Poetry, which evinces vigour of thought, harmony of numbers and true pathos” and describes Southey’s “Joan of Arc” as “a Poem which will be read as long as a love of Libert, Liberality of Sentiment, and excellent Poetry shall exist” (p.224).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2018 Maggs sold Robert Southey’s copy of Jennings’s \u003cem\u003eThe Family Cyclopaedia\u003c\/em\u003e, a presentation copy in a so-called “Cottonian” binding.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eProvenance: James Stevens-Cox (1910-1997), publisher, bookseller, hairdresser and book collector with a great interest in Bristol which no doubt accounts for his interest in this volume. Stevens-Cox has noted the reference to Chatterton on the front pastedown.\u003c\/p\u003e\n","brand":"Maggs Bros.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67908326588725,"sku":"263095","price":850.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0669\/0045\/9677\/files\/263095_01.jpg?v=1792728079","url":"https:\/\/store.maggs.com\/products\/poems-i9co5x65","provider":"Maggs Bros.","version":"1.0","type":"link"}