A Collection of Poems. In Two [Four] Volumes. By Several Hands

London: Printed for G. Pearch..., 1768, 1770. FIRST EDITION. 4 volumes. 8vo, 178 x 113 mms., pp. [iv], 323 [324 adverts];[iv], 320; [iv], 324 [325 - 328 index]; [iv], 323 [324 blank, 325 - 328 index], including half-title in each volume, engraved vignette on each title-page, and engraved head-piece for first poem in each volume, attractively bound in full contemporary polished calf, spines gilt in compartments to a lyre and urn motif, red and olive morocco labels, armorial bookplate of Edward Parker, Browsholme, Yorkshire on the front paste-down end-paper of each volume. Edward Parker (1730-1794) was Bowbearer of the Forest of Bowland married Barbara Fleming in 1750, daughter and co-heiress of Sir William Fleming of Rydal Hall, Westrnorland. Pearch's Collection is almost a piracy, at least in format and bookstyle, of Dodsley's very successful A Collection of Poems. By Several Hands, first published in 1748. The Monthly Review commented that the volumes were a "continuation of Mr. Dodsley's plan, but without his judgment. Many trifling and injudicious performances are recorded here, which ought to have rested in the oblivion which had overtaken them." The Critical Review asserted that the collection and Pearch's choice was "not al all inferior in beauty, sentiment, genius, versification, or any other excellence, to those pieces contained in the collection which they are intended to continue." Michael J. Suarez, "The Production and Consumption of the Eighteenth-Century Poetic Miscellany," in Books and their Reader in Eighteenth-Century England: New Essays, ed. Isabel Rivers (2001).