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Jane Cave's Mrs. Rueful's Misfortunes

CAVE, JANE (LATER JANE CAVE WINSCOM).

Prose and Poetry, on Religious, Moral, and Entertaining Subjects, with a Brief, but Authentic, & Affecting History of Orenzo and Sarah, from the Year 1793 to the Present Day. By Mrs. Rueful [pseud].

Place and Imprint: Bristol: Printed by George Routh, for the Author, n.d. [circa 1800].
Edition: First edition.
Bibliographical References: ESTC T222838, which records two copies: BL and South Hampton; JISC adds four: National Library of Scotland, St. Andrews, and Wellcome; OCLC adds one, NYPL (Phforzheimer, apparently the only copy in America); and see Jackson, Romantic Poetry by Women, pages 378-79; and Lonsdale, 18th Century Women Poets, pages 373-79.
Condition: Boards rubbed; a few leaves little roughly opened; signatures E-I with damaged margins, as if something gnawed at them, but the damaged areas are minimal and the text is fine; very good copy.
Book ID: 29113

Physical Description

12mo, original blue paper covered boards, recent tan paper spine, untrimmed. viii, 208 [2] pages.

Comments

56 poems and several short prose pieces by the Bristol poet Jane Cave (later Winscom), who published her first collection of verse at Winchester in 1783, followed by larger, revised editions in 1786, 1789 and 1794, with various reissues. This edition contains some of her earlier poems, but is otherwise very much new and was issued under the interesting pseudonym “Mrs. Rueful.” It has only recently been recognized as being a work by Jane Cave, who had not previously concealed her identity in her publications. As well, unlike her previous collections, it does not contain a list of subscribers, the reasons for which appear obvious in her preface (“The Apology”), in which she explains that the pseudonym "Mrs. Rueful" best describes her misfortunes in life. Her many sorrows stem in part from not being granted an education which would have improved her knowledge and status and possibly led to the companionship of other authors and readers. Instead she remained in obscurity and tended to domestic duties forced upon her, while her poems were only occasionally read by others. Additional sorrows included losses in her business due to robbery and embezzlement, a perfidious husband (which she writes about in “The Unfortunate Wife’s Address to Dissolute Husbands”), inciters to adultery, sisters of fornication, polluters of the minds of children, etc., all of which is spelled out painfully in the poems and prose. Among her earlier and fairly well known poems included are “The Head-Ache, or an Ode to Health,” “An Elegy to a Maiden Name,” and “Written a few Hours before the Birth of a Child.” In general, Jane Cave’s poetry was heavily autobiographical, and not without humor and irony, but the narrative of Mrs. Rueful's distress is a grim one. While ESTC and others do not recognize this volume as a work of Jane Cave's, the catalogue record at South Hampton correctly does.

Price: $2,250.00