Mr. Steele Detected: or, the Poor and Oppressed Orphan s Letters to the Great and Arbitrary Mr. Steele; Complaining of the Great Injustice done, to the Publick in General, and to Himself in Particular, by the Ladies Library; Publish d by Mr. Steele.

MEREDITH, Royston:

Edité par Together with Mr Steele’s Answers; and some just Reflections on them London: Printed for John Morphew: First edition, 1714

A propos de cet article

8vo., 21 (3) pp., small neat closed tear to extreme top right-hand corner of title-page, some light occasional staining, some fore-edges untrimmed as usual, bound in later quarter morocco backed boards, slighty chipped at top of spine with some light rubbing. A generally VG copy of this rare work. The ESTC collation for this pamphlet does not call for a frontispiece, but some of the fifteen copies recorded to report a plate. The frontispiece would infact appear to be a reproduction of the 17th century engraved title-page for Taylor's Holy Living; the relevance of this image was no doubt not immediately obvious to early binders, and the plate was therefore discarded. A remarkable squabble over copyright, by the grandson of the bookseller Richard Royston , and the son of Royston's successor Luke Meredith. Earlier in the year the Richard Steele had published, through Jacob Tonson, a compilation called The Ladies Library; the text had been edited for Steele by Bishop Berkeley. "The work is a sort of mixed grill, improvingly arranged, of extracts from seventeenth-century divines, with large chunks from [Jeremy] Taylor, and predominantly from Holy Living. Royston Meredith, who was evidently Royston's, and co-heir with his sister Elizabeth Meredith, complained that he was being robbed of his literary property (other works originally published by Royston, besides those by Taylor, were rifled to fill The Ladies Library); he wrote to Steele and accused him of theft from 'two poor orphans who had very little else to subsist on.' The orphans were presumably himself and his sister. Later he threatened proceedings on account of his rights in Taylor's works. Steele retorted with his intention to do 'all the good offices I can to the reverend author's grandchild now in town.' Meredith beleived this to be, on Steele's part merely 'a blind excuse for his notorious plagiarisms.'" - Gathorne-Hardy and Williams, A Bibliography of the notorious plagiarisms; Gathorne-Hardy and Williams, A Bibliography of the Writings of Jeremy Taylor, p.36. For the exchange of letters between Meredith and Steele (for which there is no manuscript source), see The Correspondence of Richard Steele (edited by Blanchard), pages 97-100.

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Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: Mr. Steele Detected: or, the Poor and Oppressed Orphan s Letters to the Great and Arbitrary Mr. Steele; Complaining of the Great Injustice done, to the Publick in General, and to Himself in Particular, by the Ladies Library; Publish d by Mr. Steele.
• Éditeur: Together with Mr Steele s Answers; and some just Reflections on them London: Printed for John Morphew: First edition
• Date de parution: 1714
• Reliure: Hardcover
• Édition: 1st Edition
• État de l'article: Very Good
• Catalogues du vendeur:
  • Eighteenth century essays
  • Printing History
  • Antiquarian