The Works of Homer: Translated from the Greek, into English Verse, by Alexander Pope. In seven volumes. [With:] Homer’s Battle of the Frogs and Mice. Translated by Mr. Parnell. Corrected by Mr. Pope. [And:] Notes and Commentaries on the Works of Homer. By Alexander Pope.

Notes

A very pleasant copy of a scarce edition of Pope's Homer, especially unusual to find complete with the Batrachomyomachia and the Notes and Commentaries, and in such nice condition. This was one of the earliest works published by the partnership of [Richard] Martin & [James] Bain: ESTC records only five productions from 1794, then they were most active in 1795 and 1796 before their bankruptcy that year. ESTC records the set in only 5 locations in the UK (Cambridge, Liverpool, two in the National Trust, and Stratford), plus UCD (in fact one volume only), and 4 locations outside Europe. The Cambridge copy contains the Commentaries as well, but does not appear to contain the 'Battle of the Frogs and Mice', which has its own title-page and signatures; it seems that it is not always found with the set. Similarly, the Notes and Commentaries may have been issued separately: it has its own ESTC entry (with but two copies located, at Virginia and Washington & Lee University), though the pagination suggests it might have been designed to be split up to accompany the respective volumes of text. Curiously, the date in that ESTC entry is 1791, though this seems implausible (no other Martin & Bain publications predate 1794), and this may be caused by poor printing of the '4' in the imprint, which in this copy could be mistaken for a '1' at first glance - both the libraries holding copies catalogue theirs as 1794.