The Favorite Village A Poem. 1800.
First Edition. 4to (260 x 200 mm), pp. [vi], 210, in contemporary full calf, flat spine elaborately gilt in compartments, black morocco label lettered in gilt, some slight splitting to joints but generally a handsome copy, with the contemporary armorial bookplate of Henry Studdy and the later decorative booklabel of John Rayner.
A lovely copy of this privately printed poem by a Sussex clergyman, who was a professor of poetry at Oxford and a fellow of Magdalen College. Hurdis set up his own printing press at his house in Bishopstone, near Seaford in Sussex, in 1796, from where he printed selections from his own lectures and poems. The Favorite Village is thought to be his best work and is a panegyric to Bishopstone, the village where he was born and where he eventually became the vicar. It is a nostalgic eulogy to the village, set within the framework of nature and the seasons and much influenced by the poetry of Cowper and Thomson.
ESTC t35451; Jackson p. 242.