TIBULLUS. James GRAINGER, translator.
A Poetical Translation of the Elegies of Tibullus; and of the Poems of Sulpicia.
With the original Text, and Notes critical and explanatory … London, A. Millar, 1759.
Two vols, 12mo, pp. xlvi, 165, [1]; [ii], 263, [1]; some pale foxing but a very good copy in contemporary speckled sheep, spines gilt in compartments, numbered directly, red morocco label.
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A Poetical Translation of the Elegies of Tibullus; and of the Poems of Sulpicia.
First edition of this translation, with notes, by James Grainger (1722–1766), an army surgeon who had, unusually, turned to the pen to supplement his income from medical work.
Living in London in the 1750s Grainger met Johnson, Smollett (who would review this work harshly), Thomas Percy, Oliver Goldsmith and others, contributed poems to the reviews, assisted Percy towards a projected edition of Ovid, and published the present translations. The English and Latin texts are published in parallel, and prefaced by a life of Tibullus which includes Grainger’s version of Ovid’s elegy on Tibullus. The work was dedicated to John Bourryau, a former pupil whom Grainger accompanied to the West Indies in 1759, where he married and wrote his long poem The Sugar-Cane.
ESTC T98464.
