The Poetic Mirror, or the Living Bards of Britain. London, Longman &c., 1816.
First Edition. 12mo, pp. [ii], iv, [i], [i], 275, text a little browned and stained throughout, in contemporary speckled calf, flat spine ruled in gilt, black morocco label lettered in gilt, with a contemporary ownership inscription of Robert Ritchie on the rather foxed front endpaper.
A magnificent spoof volume of imitations of the contemporary poets by James Hogg. With an advertisement explaining his long-conceived project of obtaining one piece of work from ‘each of the principal living Bards of Britain’ and publishing them together. The author was refused permission to reprint other poets’ work and set to achieve the same ends by invention. Byron, Wordsworth, Scott, Southey, Coleridge and James Wilson are the poets parodied, plus one poem in Scottish dialect which Hogg credits to himself.