777D Anne Wharton (1632?–1685: ) ; and many more

A Collection of Poems: Viz. The Temple of Death: By the Marquis of Normanby. An Epistle to the Earl of Dorset: By Charles Montague, Lord Halifax. The Duel of the Stags: By Sir Robert Howard. With Several Original Poems, Never before Printed, By The E. of Roscommon. The E. of Rochester. The E. Orrery. Sir Charles Sedley. } { Sir George Etherege. Mr. Granville. Mr. Stepney. Mr. Dryden, &c.

London: Printed for Daniel Brown … and Benjamin Tooke … 1701                Price $ 2,250

Octavo 19 x 11.5 cm. Signatures A4, B-U8, W4, X-Z8; Aa-Ee8, Ff4. Bound in contemporary panneled calf, hinges cracked but the cords are holding.

A revised and enlarged edition of A Collection of Poems by Several Hands, published in 1693, this itself being an expansion of the first edition of 1672. The miscellany’s title-poem is a translation by the Earl of Mulgrave of Philippe Habert’s elegy ‘Le Temple de la Mort,’ in spite of the scorn expressed in the publisher’s preface for the French nation, and ‘the Servile way of following their Modes’.  An essay on poetry, by J. Sheffield, 1st duke of Buckingham.–Horace: of the art of poetry, by Horatius Flaccus.–An essay on translated verse, by the earl of Roscommon.–Coopers hill, by J. Denham.–The duel of the stags, by R. Howard.–The temple of death, by P. Habert.–Macflecknoe, by J. Dryden; with Spencer’s ghost, by J. Oldham–Lecretius.–The plague of Ahtens (!) by T. Sprat.–

The spleen, by A.K. Finch, contess of Winchilsea.–A letter from Italy, by J. Addison together with The mourning muse of Alexis, by W. Congreve.–The Kit-Cats, by R. Blackmore.–The campaign, by J. Addison.–Pastorals, by A. Philips.–Faction display’d, by W. Shippen.–Baucis and Philemon, by J. Swift; as also An ode upon, by W. Dillon, 4th earl of Roscommon.–Muscipula, by E. Holdsworth.    Fourth edition of the important ‘Temple of Death’ miscellany of Restoration poetry, retaining most of the poems from the third edition (1693) and adding much material, including all the poems on pp. 172-282 – with contributions from Stepney, Arwaker and Congreve – and the poems at the end (pp. 391-453), among them ‘The Spleen’ by Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea. Also notable is the first printing of John Philips’s remarkably popular Miltonic imitation The Splendid Shilling. A Song by Mrs Wharton, The Lamentation also by Wharton

Case 151(e) ; Greer & Hastings, The Surviving Works of Anne Wharton, 1, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10(a), 20. 182.Prinz  (Rochester) VII, 21.

DNB writes “WHARTON, ANNE (1632?–1685), poetess, born in Oxfordshire about 1632, was the second daughter and coheiress of Sir Henry Lee, third baronet, of Ditchley, by Anne, daughter of Sir John Danvers, knight, of Cornbury. On 16 Sept. 1673 she married, as his first wife, Thomas Wharton (afterwards first Marquis of Wharton) [q. v.], to whom she brought a dowry of 10,000l. and 2,500l. a year. In 1680 and 1681 she was in Paris, and both then and afterwards had some correspondence with Dr. Gilbert Burnet [q. v.], who sent poems for her to criticise, among them his ‘Paraphrase on the Fifty-third Chapter of Isaiah, in imitation of Mrs. Anne Wharton.’ Her own ‘Lamentations of Jeremiah paraphrased,’ written apparently in 1681, appeared in the collection entitled ‘The Temple of Death,’ 1695 (it was reprinted with some addition in the second volume of ‘Whartoniana,’ 1727, pp. 64–92). Her ‘Verses on the Snuff of a Candle’ appeared in the first volume of ‘Dryden’s Miscellanies’ (1684, i. 144); her ‘Penelope to Ulysses’ in Tonson’s ‘Ovid’s Epistles by several Hands,’ of 1712, and some minor pieces, including a song, ‘How hardly I conceal’d my Tears,’ in Tooke’s ‘Collection’ (1716, p. 209), and in other miscellanies. Her ‘Elegy on the Death of the Earl of Rochester’ (in the ‘Examen Miscellaneum’ of 1702, p. 15) drew from Waller the lines to ‘fairest Chloris,’ commencing ‘Thus mourn the Muses!’ and her ‘Paraphrase on the Lord’s Prayer,’ some tumid verses commencing

    Silence, you Winds; listen, Etherial Lights,

    While our Urania sings what Heav’n indites.

Waller pays the lady the somewhat doubtful compliment of assuring her that she was allied to Rochester ‘in genius as well as in blood.’ The kinship in either case was remote; the earl’s mother was aunt to Anne’s father, Sir Henry Lee. Her verses were also commended by Dryden, who upon the death of her elder sister, the Countess of Abingdon, in 1691, wrote the panegyrical poem ‘Eleonora.’ Anne Wharton died at Adderbury on 29 Oct. 1685, and was buried at Winchendon on 10 Nov. following. Her marriage had proved childless and unhappy, and it was only the good counsel of Burnet that prevented her from leaving her husband about 1682. A collection of ‘Copies of Mrs. Wharton’s Poems’ was appended to the Bodleian copy of Edward Young’s ‘Amoris Christiani mnēmoneutikon’ (1686). In addition to her printed writings, Mrs. Wharton left in manuscript a blank-verse tragedy in five acts called ‘Love’s Martyr, or Witt above Crowns.’ The subject is the love of Ovid for Julia, daughter of the emperor Augustus. The tragedy, formerly at Strawberry Hill, now forms Additional MS. 28693. A portrait, painted by Lely, was engraved by R. Earlom. Another, engraved by Bocquet, is given in Walpole’s ‘Royal and Noble Authors’ (1806, iii. 284).

[Ballard’s Memoirs of Learned Ladies, p. 297; Burke’s Extinct Peerage, pp. 347, 582; E. R. Wharton’s Whartons of Wharton Hall, 1898, p. 47; Nichols’s Lit. Anecdotes, v. 644; Waller’s Poems, ed. Drury, 1893, p. 342; General Dict. x. 122; Nichols’s Select Collection of Poems, 1780, i. 51, ii. 329, iii. 44, iv. 356; Chaloner Smith’s Mezzotint Portraits, p. 258, where Anne Wharton is wrongly entitled marchioness.]

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844J Anne Wharton (1659-85)  ed John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham (1648-1720)

A Collection of Poems written upon several occasions by Several Persons with many additions, Never before in print.


London, Printed for Tho. Collins and John Ford in Fleet-street, and Will. Cademan at the Popes Head New-Exchange Strand. 1673.                                                  $2,900

Occtavo 17 x 11cm. Signatures: A4,B-M8, N4, ((A1 blank, and present). bound in contemporary sheep hinge cracked but holding strong.. 

A revised and enlarged edition of A Collection of Poems by Several Hands, being an expansion of the first edition of 1672, which has nothing identifiable as by Bhen, Only this edition has the “Song from the Dutch Lover” Most of the other poems are identified as written by Sir Charles Sedley , Sir George Etheridge and Sheffield Duke of Buckingham.

 Some of the wonderful Poems in this miscellany are: Aphra Bhen’s Poem A SONG in the Dutch-Lover is on leaf N1r-N2r,   

 By the Earl of Rochester, To Celia (all things submit themselves to you…)P113, I1r and on M5Vis Another Prologue to Morrocco.

Wing; C5175; Arber’s Term cat.; I 134; Cf. Case, A.E. Poetical miscellanies, 1935, p. 100.Case 151(b); see ODonnell Bhen *BB2   Greer & Hastings, The Surviving Works of Anne Wharton, 1, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10(a), 20. 182.   Prinz  (Rochester) VII,4.*

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480J.  Judith Drake. (Mary Astell or Judith Drake (fl 1696 d. 1723)

An essay in defence of the female sex. In which are inserted the characters of a pedant, a squire, a beau, a vertuoso, a poetaster, a city-critick, &c. In a letter to a lady. Written by a lady.

London : printed for A. Roper and E. Wilkinson at the Black Boy, and R. Clavel at the Peacock, in Fleetstreet, 1696.            Price: $1,800

Octavo (16 x 9 ½ cm)  Signatures: A8, B4, B-K8, L4 (Lacking the engraved frontispiece, “The Compleat Beau”)

Bound in Contemporary blind stamped calf, rebacked. The contents generally clean, Lacking the engraved frontispiece of “The Compleat Beau”. Second edition, published the same year as the first, of “one of the greatest works of early modern ‘feminism’” (Smith, p. 727).

The words “a pedant, .. beau,” and “A vertuoso, .. &c.” are bracketed together on title page. Quire L is two settings: last line of text on p. 148 is 1) “the mean Performance of” or 2) “mean Performance of”.

Wing A4058. NOW Wing (CD-ROM, 1996), D2125A

Published anonymously and previously attributed to Mary Astell or Jane Barker, the essay is now generally credited as the work of author and physician Judith Drake (c.1670-1723), active as part of an intellectual circle who included Astell and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

“In 1696, An Essay in Defense of the Female Sex was published in London, “written by a Lady.” For a long time, this work was attributed to Mary Astell, an English pro-woman writer, known for her work A Serious Proposal to the Ladies published two years earlier. In recent years, however, the authorship has been attributed to Judith Drake, and English intellectual from the same circle as Astell. She was married to the physician and political pamphleteer James Drake, who wrote a poem dedicated to the author, which appeared in the second edition of the book. Another piece of evidence of Drake’s authorship is in the description of the book that appears in a catalog of books sold after 1741 by the publisher Edmund Curll, in which it was noted that it was written by “‘Mrs. Drake, probably a sister of Dr. James Drake, who attended to the publication of the pamphlet’” (quoted in Hill 877). Her husband was James Drake, fellow of the Royal Society, physician and writer on medicine and politics; his name is given to the laudatory verses which introduce this work. Judith completed, edited, and published her posthumous medical opus Anthropologia Nova in 1707. 

The essay is now considered “one of the most significant English contributions to the beginning of the modern debate concerning women” (Smith, p. 727) .

Written in the form of a letter to a friend, “the tract vigorously and witfully defended feminine intellectual ability and character. Drake drew on John Locke’s essay on human understanding to construct a rationalist framework on which to argue that these were customs and language. which spawned the belief that women were intellectually inferior to men. Drake then rejected the cult of the elders and, in their stead, defended the value of learning ‘Modern’ and the value of information education for women Drake welded rationalist epistemology to ‘feminist’ The argument was particularly original in the context of early modern writings in favor of women. For, despite the proliferation of these works at the end of the 17th century, only two “feminist” texts had previously used such a methodology as a basis for their discussion, and only one had been English. was The Woman as Good as the Man (1677), a translation of the Cartesian analysis of François Poulain de la Barre on the cultural construction of gender, On the equality of the two sexes (1673). Two decades later, another Cartesian-inspired treatise joined the debate. This was a serious proposition from Mary Astell to the ladies (1694 and 1697), who advocated the establishment of places of “religious retreat” which would allow women to withdraw from the world to practice contemplation “(Smith, pp. 728- 29). See Hannah Smith, “English“ Feminist ”Writings and“ An Essay in Defense of the Female Sex ”by Judith Drake (1696),” The Historical Journal, vol. 44, no. 3, 2001, p. 727-47.

Wing (CD-ROM, 1996),; D2125A; Arber’s Term cat.,; II 580