[Privately printed volume.] Winchester, and a few other Compositions in Prose and Verse. [by Rev. Charles Townsend, Rector of Kingston-by-Sea, Sussex]

Townsend was a member of the Holland House circle. Two of his poems were compared favourably with Wordsworth by J. G. Lockhart. 4to, 80 pp, followed by a manuscript leaf, paginated 81 and 82, with the poems 'Sonnet, On Viewing St Paul's from Blackfriar's Bridge' and 'Sonnet | Richmond late in the Evening'. In original brown cloth boards, worn, rebacked and repaired, with 'WINCHESTER.' in gilt on front. Internally sound and tight, on aged paper. Tipped on the recto of the front free endpaper is a presentation inscription: 'With the Authors | Kind regards:- | Jany: 30th: 1837'. Ownership inscription of Cranford J. Pocock on front pastedown. Loosely inserted is the review of Townsend's book, together with W. S. Rose's 'Epistle to the Right Honourable John Hookham Frere in Malta', from the Quarterly Review, April and July 1836, pp.400-415. Uncommon: COPAC lists copies at the British Library, Aberdeen, Oxford, Cambridge, Leeds, and Southampton. A cutting from a victorian bookseller's catalogue, laid down on the rear pastedown, states that the item is 'very rare, a few copies only being printed for the author's friends'.