Gertrude of Wyoming, and Other Poems

London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green : And J. Murray, 1825. 9th ed. 16mo with textured & b;ind-stamped leather boards; marbled endpapers and edges; [8], 160 pages, 3 unnumbered leaves of plates: illustrations; 18 cm Very good (-); boards are rubbed; binding is tight; prior owner inscription in ink to title page; clean and very readable. Hardcover.

"Gertrude of Wyoming: A Pennsylvanian Tale (1809) is a romantic epic in Spenserian stanza composed by Scottish poet Thomas Campbell (1777–1844).[...] The poem was written in the context of the Battle of Wyoming." (-Wikipedia). Set in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania during the Revolutionary-era frontier conflicts, the poem constructs an imagined Arcadia shattered by the 1778 massacre; the heroine Gertrude becomes the emblem of lost innocence, her story unfolding through Campbell’s characteristically musical couplets and gentle moralizing pathos. The accompanying shorter poems—among them “The Battle of the Baltic,” “Lord Ullin’s Daughter,” and other widely anthologized pieces—showcase his talent for lyric clarity and affective compression. Though more a product of British romantic dreamwork than American historical exactness, the volume was immensely influential in shaping early nineteenth-century transatlantic impressions of the American frontier and remains one of Campbell’s most enduring contributions to romantic verse | Depictions of Native American (Indian) battles in poetry.