1821 REJECTED ADDRESSES James and Horace SMITH

A bright copy of Rejected Addresses by James and Horace Smith.

Bound in the original publisher's boards.

There is a Wilson bookseller's label on the front pastedown.

Of Rejected Addresses, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography explains, "To mark the opening of the rebuilt Drury Lane Theatre after the fire of 1809, a competition was held to find an inaugural ode. 112 addresses were submitted, none of an acceptable standard", the Smith brothers had the idea "of publishing, anonymously, a volume of parodies purporting to make public a selection of the effusions rejected. In six weeks the brothers wrote the twenty-one pieces” and it became “one of the cleverest volumes of parody to be published in the Romantic period”. Parodies include Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge, Byron, Thomas Moore, and Sir Walter Scott.

CONDITION