The Pleasures of Imagination. A Poem. In Three Books.

Hardcover. Fine. Illustrated with engraved vignette on title page. 4to. Modern half-leather-backed boards. London: Printed for R. Dodsley . . . 1744. First Edition, first issue, with the presence of the footnote on page 9 and page 20 misnumbered 22. Anna Seward considered this blank verse poem the finest metaphysical poem in any language. Erasmus and Darwin preferred Akensides blank verse to that of Milton, and Dodsley agreed to publish the poem on the recommendation of Alexander Pope. Samuel Johnson, in his Lives of the Poets, comments on Akensides poem: Akenside was one of those poets who have felt very early the motions of genius, and one of those students who have very early stored their memories with sentiments and images. Many of his performances were produced in his youth; and his greatest work, The Pleasures of Imagination, appeared in 1744. I have heard Dodsley, by whom it was published, relate, that when the copy was offered him, the price demanded for it, which was an hundred and twenty pounds, being such as he was not inclined to give precipitately, he carried the work to Pope, who, having looked into it, advised him not to make a cheap offer; for this was no every-day writer. Some light foxing to title and half-title, o/w Fine.