Rare Belfast imprint
Libertas. A poem
Belfast: printed for the author by J. and W. Magee, 1789. First edition, 8vo, pp. 16; stitched, as issued; uncut; a fine copy. A poem celebrating the fall of James II, "originally intended for recital at a festive meeting of the principal inhabitants of Derry, who assembled on the 7th of December 1788, for the purpose of commemorating the heroism displayed in the preceding century, in support of freedom, by their illustrious ancestors." Because Glass only began writing the poem a few days before the event, and "as it has been committed to the press in the first rough draft," it was Glass's intention that the poem should be revised and published "upon a more extended scale." However, this seems not to have come to pass. James Glass, (fl. 1789-97) was a radical poet and friend and disciple of the Ulster radical poet Samuel Thomson (1766-1816). Glass's poem fell within a recognizable vein of radicalism that "challenged the right of the aristocracy to land ownership in the face of a disenfranchised laboring class who worked the land and produced wealth for others." ESTC citing nine copies: Harvard (2), Yale, and Berkeley in North America, plus five others in Ireland and Northern Ireland. Not in Donoghue, Poets of Ireland, London, 1892. See also: Jennifer Orr, Fostering an Irish Writer's Circle, a Revisionist Reading of the Life and Works of Samuel Thomson, an Ulster poet (1766-1816), her PhD thesis, Glasgow, 2010. Burmester 2019. Item #55807
Price: $1,500.00
