‘GIVEN BY DR WILLIAM STANDFAST’ - Musarum Anglicanarum Analecta

Addison’s Latin poems published in their first Oxford edition of 1692 with compelling provenance ‘to the Library in the Charity School Chamber in Nottingham given by Dr William Standfast’. Standfast’s private library was created with a view to providing for a public library which came into being in 1818 when it was moved to the Bluecoat School in Nottingham and then became part of the city’s Subscription Library. A little over a century later almost the whole of the collection was dispersed via the bookseller Sotheran’s, no doubt including this volume.

Modern full crushed red morocco with gilt lettering; plain new endpapers. Provenance statement to the verso of the title page, above the printed imprimatur. The book collates complete: pp [8] 294 [2] including the blank terminal leaf. A single scholarly note in pencil to page 139, perhaps in Standfast’s hand.

Addison’s neo-Latin verse was highly regarded and helped win him a Fellowship at Magdalen College, Oxford. He was barely 20 at the time of the publication oF this volume. This book was reprinted later in the 1690s alongside a second volume which is not called for here.