The New Bath Guide. Or Memoirs of the B.N.R.D. Family in a Series of Poetical Epistles.. Cet article n’est pas disponible.The New Bath Guide. Or Memoirs of the B.N.R.D. Family in a Series of Poetical Epistles.

16mo. (17 x 10 cm). pp.vi+106. Uncut in original boards, sometime rebacked. Engraved title-page, 11 engraved plates including frontispiece (one with partial old coloured, another with a pencil tracing to verso) illustrated and engraved by F. Eginton. Contents a bit toned, generally a very good unsophisticated copy. The English poet Christopher Anstey (1724-1805) published his major work, The New Bath Guide, in 1766. Subtitled "Memoirs of the [Blunderhead] family, in a series of poetical epistles", it was composed at Trumpington and printed at Cambridge, the first quarto edition costing 5s. By the year's end five editions had appeared. Horace Walpole said that it described life in Bath with "so much wit, so much humour, fun, and poetry, so much originality, [as] never met together before". Walpole found the poem's mockery of Dryden, Handel, Methodism, and picturesque clichés compelling (Walpole, Corr., letter to Montagu, 20 June 1766). While later denigrating Anstey, Walpole never lowered his view of the poem (Walpole, Memoirs, 3.11920). Gray was as positive, writing to Wharton on 26 August 1766: "Have you read the 'New Bath Guide'? It is the only thing in fashion, and is a new and original kind of humour". The Critical Review, the Gentleman's Magazine, and the Monthly Review all praised it. The Guide was much imitated in the next fifty years, itself having forty editions. It was illustrated by Rowlandson, Eglinton, and Cruikshank.…