The Seasons

THE

S E A S O N S

A

H Y M N

To the Memory of

Sir ISAAC NEWTON

AND

BRITANNIA, a POEM

______________

By Mr. THOMSON.

______________

L O N D O N

J. MILLAN and A. MILLAR

_________

MDCCXXX

DESCRIPTION

(ii) + 77 + 71 + 72 + 69 + 19 + (ii)

Spring second edition 1730

Summer third edition 1730

Autumn second edition 1730

Winter first edition 1730

Book measures 200mm x 135mm approximately.

Recently bound in quarter brown calf over pastel boards. Spine with five gilt-ruled raised bands with maroon title label. Plain end-papers. Full page verso engraving to start of each "season".

CONDITION

In overall very good condition. The binding is very firm and strong. Some minor darkening to lower and upper spine with no other visible wear or damage whatsoever. Internally the pages are uniformly dulled but clean throughout with occasional spotting. An ex-libris copy from The University of Chicago Library, there are some small library mark numbers to the end-papers and on the title page. Also, a neat "hole-punched" mark to the title page. One mark states that the book is no longer the property of the University. None of these marks are obtrusive or detract from the book greatly.

INTERESTING

James Thomson (1700 to 1748) was a Scottish poet and playwright, known for his poems The Seasons and The Castle of Indolence, and for the lyrics of "Rule, Britannia!".

Thomson was educated first at the Parish school of Southdean then at Jedburgh Grammar School and Edinburgh University where he was a member of "The Grotesques" literary club; some of his early poems were published in the Edinburgh Miscellany of 1720. Seeking a larger stage, he went to London in 1725, and became the tutor of Thomas Hamilton (who became the 7th Earl of Haddington) in Barnet. There he was able to begin Winter, the first of his four Seasons.

Blank verse had been considered more of an interesting toy than anything useful to poetry, despite John Milton's epic-scale Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained half a century earlier.

The poem was published one season at a time, Winter in 1726, Summer in 1727, Spring in 1728 and Autumn only in the complete edition of 1730. Thomson borrowed Milton's Latin-influenced vocabulary and inverted word order, with phrases like "in convolution swift". He extended Milton's narrative use of blank verse to use it for description and to give a meditative feeling. The critic Raymond Dexter Havens called Thomson's style pompous and contorted, remarking that Thomson seemed to have avoided "calling things by their right names and speaking simply, directly, and naturally"

The lengthy blank verse poem, reflecting on the landscape of the countryside, was highly influential and much liked for at least a century after its writing. Especially lavish editions were produced between 1830 and 1870 in Britain and America.

Oscar Wilde included this poem, only half-sarcastically, in a list of 'books not to read at all'.