New Poems

Boston: Wm. J. Reynolds & Co., 1850 Hard cover, 8vo., (4 3/4 inches x 7 1/4 inches) in green cloth with ornate gilt floral design blocked to both boards, 287pp., Presentation Copy, with pen inscription to ffep.: "Ben: Perley Poore with kind regards and best wishes of the Author, Jan. 13th, 1850." Chromolithographed title page. Condition: overall about Good, but with significant damage to surface of spine. Otherwise, boards are dust soiled, with light wear to corners. Lightly age-toned interior, with text block tight. Occasional soiling, and top edge staining to a few interior pages. Splendidly bright four-color title page illuminated in gold, with original tissue guard. *** HANNAH FLAGG GOULD (1789-1865) was a popular poet in her time, residing in Newburyport for more than fifty years at 23 Charter Street, a three story brick Georgian home located only a couple of blocks away from this bookseller. She published eleven volumes of poetry, ranging in topic from verses on childhood and domestic topics, but also on political and patriotic themes. She spent her adulthood caring for her father Benjamin, a Revolutionary War veteran of the Battle of Lexington; a couple of the poems in this volume concern the Revolutionary War, e.g. "The Battle of Lexington," and " The Warriors's Return." She was also a contributor to Newburyport abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison's anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator. (Garrison's birthplace was only a few blocks away from the Goulds'.) The snap of clipper ship sails and the sounds of hammering from shipyards along the Merrimack come alive in a few of Hannah Gould's poems in this volume: in particular "The Launch" and "The Last Shipwreck." Edward Monroe Bacon, in his 1902 book, Literary Pilgrimages in New England, gives a detailed exposition of the rich political and literary history of the Newburyport area, as does J.J. Currier in the standard work, Ould Newbury: Historical and Biographical Sketches (1896.) *** BENJAMIN PERLEY POORE, (who signed his name Ben: Perley Poore,) born in Newburyport, Massachusetts in 1820, was laterly a nationally-known journalist and political commentator of the mid nineteenth century. He founded and was the first president of the Grid Iron Club in Washington DC. as well as serving various quasi-political positions such as Clerk of the Senate Committee on Printing and Clerk of the Committee on Foreign Relations. In these roles he had the access to, and familiarity with, many of the notable political figures of the day: his two-volume Perley's Reminiscences of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis (1886) makes entertaining reading. John J. Currier (noted above) gives an more in-depth sketch of Poore's early years, in which one is struck the sheer variety of opportunity available to men of talent in this age. How indeed, one wonders, did a lad expelled from his prep school for bad behavior, go on such a variety of worthy endeavors: foreign attache at Brussels whilst simultaneously acting as foreign correspondent for a Boston newspaper; authorized by the Massachusetts legislature to bring home ten volumes-worth of documents from Paris pertaining to the conduct of the American Revolution; Major and Lieutenant Colonel of the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment during the Civil War. He also famously lost a bet about presidential candidate Millard Fillmore winning more votes in Massachusetts than his opponent, John Fremont. In payment of the wager he was required to push a wheelbarrow of apples from his home at Indian Hill Farm to Boston. An illustrated broadside with song entitled "The Wheelbarrow Polka" was published on the occasion. OCLC 4953785.. Hard Cover. Good Minus.