An Essay on Man, Being the First Book of Ethic Epistles to Henry St. John, L. Bolingbroke.; BOUND WITH: Akenside's The Pleasures of Imagination. A Poem. In Three Books

London: John Wright, 1734. First. hardcover. near fine. William Kent. THE FIRST EDITION WITH ALL 4 SEPARATELY PUBLISHED EPISTLES APPEARING TOGETHER AS ONE POEM. Rubricated title with engraved vignette; 6 other small engraved designs throughout by Paul Fourdrinier after William Kent; some woodcut decorations. [6], [7], 8-74 pages. London: John Wright for Lawton Gilliver, 1734. First edition. BOUND WITH: The Pleasures of Imagination. Rubricated title with engraved vignette, decorative headpieces. [4], 5-125 + 2 pages of ads. London: R. Dodsley, 1744. Second printing of the first edition (with corrected pagination and footnotes removed from page 9). Short 4to, beautifully rebound in full polished brown calf with blind-stamped designs on covers and red leather spine labels. Both titles with contemporary ink signature and some pages with very light staining at margins but generally pages are rather clean -- a near fine copy.<br/> <br/> Pope's "An Essay on Man" is one of the Grolier Club's One Hundred Books Famous in English Literature, and widely regarded a masterpiece. Among the well-known quotes from it are "hope springs eternal in the human breast," and "the only science of mankind is man." Akenside's "The Pleasures of Imagination" is the best-known work of the English poet and physician, begun when he was only seventeen years old. Dodsley paid Akenside 120 Pounds for it after soliciting the opinion of Alexander Pope who remarked that "this was no every day writer". --Foxon A-139. <BR> <br> "An Essay on Man began as a single epistle, from which the manuscripts show that it developed into a four-epistle poem on the limits of human knowledge with respect to (1) the Universe, (2) self-knowledge and ethics, (3) the growth of society, and (4) man's hope of happiness" (DNB). First published anonymously, "Pope's Essay on Man was an international best-seller; within its first century, it appeared in over a hundred editions in eighteen languages, making Pope the first English poet to enjoy contemporary fame on the European continent" (Larrimore, The Problem of Evil).<br/> <br/>