Christopher Anstey, The New Bath Guide 1776 Edition, Humoristic

"The New Bath Guide: Or, Memoirs of the B--r--d Family in a Series of Poetical Epistles" by Christopher Anstey, with frontispiece drawn by S. Walde, engraved by Charles Grignion the Elder (1721-1810); Tenth Edition published by Dodsley, London, mdcclxxvi (1776).

Humoristic depiction of customs & manners of the fine society; social satire. Horace Walpole describes it as a "set of letters in verse,... describing the life at Bath, ...so much wit, humor, fun and poetry, so much originality, never met together before."

Hard boards, leather, five raised bands on spine, some wear, rounded corners, [see photos]; 4.1/2" x 7.1/4"; frontispiece copper engraving of Blunderhead family in Bath, antique stamp of The Royal Institution of Great Britain on the title page, 175 pages, some soiling, very good condition.

"The New Bath Guide" was first published anonymously in 1766. These 'letters' of the 'Blundarhead' family had an instantaneous success. Commenting on the appearance of the Guide, published far away in Cambridge on the other side of the country by an unknown author, his son later marveled that "It was hardly possible that a work of this description...could have made its appearance under circumstances of greater disadvantage." The title was an added hindrance at first, since the third edition of the official city guide, now titled The New Bath Guide or useful pocket companion, had been published in 1765, the year before Anstey's work. Though it provided a useful point of reference to readers, repeated editions of the pocket companion, 'corrected and much enlarged', continued to sow confusion for as long as the two books continued to appear.

The Guide relates the misadventures of the three naive children of a Northern squire, as reported by them over the course of fifteen letters to friends and parents, and incidentally give a comic picture of life in the spa. In a far departure from the Augustan manner common until then, the style is colloquial and written in loose anapaestic tetrameters, later to be characterized as the "Anstey measure" or "Bath-guide verse."

Bath developed to the popular spa town in the Georgian era. It had become perhaps the most fashionable of the rapidly developing British spa towns, attracting many notable visitors. In 1816, it was described as "a seat of amusement and dissipation", where "scenes of extravagance in this receptacle of the wealthy and the idle, the weak and designing" were habitual.

Christopher Anstey (1724-1805) was an English poet who also wrote in Latin. After a period managing his family's estates, he moved permanently to Bath and died after a long public life there. His poem, The New Bath Guide, brought him to fame and began an easy satirical fashion that was influential throughout the second half of the 18th century. Later he wrote An Electoral Ball, another burlesque of Bath society that allowed him to develop and update certain themes in his earlier work. Among his Latin writing were translations and summaries based on both these poems; he was also joint author of one of the earliest Latin translations of Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, which went through several editions both in England and abroad.

Charles Grignion the Elder (1721-1810) was a British engraver and book illustrator. He studied in Paris under J.P. Le Bas and then at Gravelot's drawing school in Covent Garden, alongside Thomas Gainsborough. In 1746, Grignion engraved Hogarth's portrait of David Garrick as Richard III, and later he worked on the second plate of Hogarth's 1754 Election series. Hogarth thought so highly of Grignion that he employed him to work in his own house on his "Canvassing for Votes" (plate two of Four Prints of an "Election" published in 1757). He also engraved the earliest record of a cricket match, published in the General Advertiser in 1748. Being an excellent artist, combining good draughtsmanship and purity of line, Grignion obtained plenty of employment from the booksellers, and devoted himself to illustrating books, chiefly from the designs of Gravelot, F. Hayman, S. Wale, and J.H. Mortimer. He engraved the early designs of Stothard for "Bell's "Poets." Among his important works were the plates to "Albinus's "Anatomy," published by Knapton in 1757; some of Dalton's "Antique Statues;" illustrations to Alexander Pope's Works; "Caractacus before the Emperor Claudius at Rome," after Hayman; the frontispiece to Smollett's "History of England" (exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1761); "Phryne and Zenocrates" after Salvator Rosa; plates to Walpole's "Anecdotes of Painting;" various portraits; landscapes after J.F. Barralet, W. Bellers, A. Heckel, and frontispiece and tailpiece to the "Society of Artists' Catalogue 1761", and other plates. Grignion continued working until he was in his late eighties. His nephew Charles Grignion the Younger (1754-1804), was also British painter and engraver. [Reference: National Portrait gallery London and several other museums in Europe and the United States.]

Provenance:

The Royal Institution of Great Britain is an organization for scientific education and research, based in the City of Westminster. It was founded in 1799 by the leading British scientists of the age, including Henry Cavendish and its first president, George Finch. Its foundational principles were diffusing the knowledge of, and facilitating the general introduction of useful mechanical inventions and improvements, as well as enhancing the application of science to the common purposes of life (including through teaching, courses of philosophical lectures, and experiments).

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