May Fair. In Four Cantos.

London: William H. Ainsworth..., 1827. FIRST AND ONLY EDITION. 12mo, 178 x 107 mms., pp. [iv], 194 [195 - 196 adverts dated May, 1827], original boards, uncut, paper label on spine, which is a little defective with some loss of paper. The writer and Church of England Clergyman George Croly (1780 - 1860) was born in Dublin and educated at Trinity College; he moved to London in 1810 and pursued a literary career. His successful poem, Paris in 1815 (1817) elicited a lampoon from Byron in Don Juan but was approvingly reviewed by John Croker Wilson. May Fair was reviewed in the Quarterly Review for 1828, along with several other poems. The reviewer comments, "'May Fair' is a playful satire on the manners of the time - displaying talents quite equal, in our opinion, to the 'Advice to Julia' [by Henry Luttrell] - though not, we rather suspect, written by an author so intimately conversant with the scenes touched on.... We hope the author will in his next performance take care to be as lively and entertaining as he appears in the lines we have quoted, without exhibiting any of that ill-nature, and, we must add, that ill-breeding, of which it would be more easy than ornamental to afford specimens from this duodecimo. He owes it to himself to set to work with a more of plan, and to polish with a great deal more care; and if he does so, we venture to promise him a place among our comic satirists."