[COMMONPLACE]. Grimm, F. [François?].

Autograph manuscript title: The Aonian-Bee: Being a Collection and Selection of Poetical Miscellanies. [Device:] FG. [A manuscript poetical miscellany.]

Dordrecht, 1812—, 1817. 8vo, contemporary half sheep, marbled sides, various gatherings of autograph verses bound together and paginated in ink, [2], 200, [4] pages. Cracked along one gutter between gatherings; some rubbing; some damp-staining to the front endpapers; overall, in very good condition. Item #18070

With an additional ink note on the title page beneath the device, “(i.e. F. Grim my most dearly beloved and regretted brother. J.W.G.),” with the signature J. W. Grim on the blank opposite and another preliminary blank. An attractive holograph commonplace collection of verses, and some measure of English Georgian literary cross-pollination in Dordt toward the end of the French period in the Netherlands, this volume collecting some 152 English poems, tending toward witty, from epigrams to odes, with elegies and translations, nearly all seemingly taken from the columns of the Gentleman’s Magazine and kindred miscellanies from the 1760s through the 1780s. Grimm includes verses from the Banbury Hermit, Dr. Jones Redman of Berkhamstead (“On the Rebellion in my Bowels, and in Praise of Rhubarb,” etc.), juvenile verses from Dr. Johnson on a sprig of myrtle, an epitaph on Nell Batchelor, “an Oxford Pye-Woman” (taken from Warton’s Oxford Sausage), etc. Such Dutch genealogical resources as easily came to hand produce contradictory results when compared to the inscription here; one Jen Willem Grimm died in Dordrecht in March, 1815, a a François Grimm died in Dordrecht in 1820. This volume with an ink note in Dutch to the front free endpaper, “gevonden” (“found”).

Price: $450.00