Frobisher's New Select Collection of Epitaphs. Humorous, Whimsical, Moral, & Satyrical.

FROBISHER, [Nathaniel], compiler & publisher. Frobisher's New Select Collection of Epitaphs. Humorous, Whimsical, Moral, & Satyrical. 12mo, original boards, engraved title, pp. 216, uncut. London: Printed for Nath. Frobisher, in the Pavement, York [1790?].

First Edition. A compilation of approximately 150 epitaphs in verse on the great, and not so great, with an alphabetical index of names, and an alphabetical index of first lines, compiled by Nathaniel Frosbisher (1752-1799), was born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, and spent his career as a bookseller and stationer at York, with his first shop in The Pavement, York. Information about Frobisher can be found in H. Ling Roth, The Yorkshire Coiners, 1767-1783. And Notes on Old and Prehistoric Halifax (1906), pp. 264-265.The only American represented here is Benjamin Franklin, as might be expected. His epitaph is his own, "On a Printer of Boston, in New-England." Well known are Aphra Behn, General Wolfe, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Drake, Fielding, Goldsmith, Handel, Hogarth, Andrew Marvel, Isaac Newton, Milton, Gay, Ben Jonson, etc. James Fordyce's epitaph on Dr. Johnson takes up more than two pages. Less well known is the master of Star Inn in Lynn, known as Dick Bumbo, evidently a patron of his own establishment, "of which liquor he drank two gallons a day for 36 years," and Thomas Kemp, hanged for sheep-stealing: "Here lies the Body of Thomas Kemp/ Who liv'd by Wool, but dy'd by Hemp..." Attractive engraved scene of a graveyard on title. Reprinted in 1895. Well represented in institutions, buy scarce in the trade. A very good copy in original condition, mildly foxed and with an insignificant worm track at the extreme outer edges of pp. 111-156. CBEL II, 244.