Borough, The.
Rebecca Gratz’s Copy
[Gratz, Rebecca]. Crabbe, Rev. G. The Borough. A poem in twenty-four letters. Philadelphia…: Bradford and Inskeep…, 1810.
8vo.; endpapers foxed, with minor offsetting; full calf, spine stamped in gilt. In a specially made quarter-morocco slipcase.
First edition of Crabbe’s popular second book: “Some attacks upon the Huntingtonians in this poem produced a controversy with the editor of the ‘Christian Observer,’ which ended amicably” (DNB). Rebecca Gratz’s copy, signed in pencil on the first blank, “R. Gratz.” An engaging association copy, evincing Gratz’s interest in the work of a Christian poet. In each of Crabbe’s twenty-four verse “letters” he addresses a distinct element of his borough, including The Church; The Vicar—The Curate, &c.; Sects and Professions in Religion; Professions; Trades; Amusements; Prisons; Schools; and several chapters on the arts and issues of social welfare.
George Crabbe (1754-1832) began publishing his verse in his late teens, before turning to the study of medicine. The failure of his medical practice left him in financial straits so dire that his great love, Miss Elmy, refused to marry him, turning his head to a possible career in letters. After many closed doors and cold shoulders, he attracted the attention of Burke, and with his advocacy—and a couple of highly successful poems, the “Village” and the “Library”—soon secured a place in literary society. On Burke’s advice he took deacon’s orders and then priest’s orders, and with his new-found livings, patronage, and respectability, married Miss Elmy. After the “Newspaper” in 1785, he published nothing for twenty-two years, instead periodically burning piles of his copious manuscripts, including three novels. In his lifetime he was praised by Sir Walter Scott, Cardinal Newman, Jane Austen, William Wordsworth, Edward Fitzgerald, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and others. Lord Byron called him, in “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers,” “though nature’s sternest painter, yet the best.” After his death, a monument was erected in his honor by his parishioners. His contribution to literature is noted by the DNB:
Crabbe’s realism, preceding even Cowper and anticipating Wordsworth, was the first important indication of one characteristic movement in the contemporary school of poetry. His clumsy style and want of sympathy with the new world isolated him as a writer, as he was a recluse in his life. But the force and fidelity of his descriptions of the scenery of his native place and of the characteristics of the rural population give abiding interest to his work. (p. 1356)
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