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WORLD'S WORST POET CELEBRATES LIBERATION OF LEIDEN
BOOREN, Elias van. Het Tweehondertste Jubels Vreugt Verhaal meede ter gedagtenis beschreve en op reym gemaakt van my ... inhoudende het geen op den derden en vierden van October 1774 is geschiet ontrent het feest houden van het tweehondertste jubel van Leydens ontzet.
[Leiden?], [Jacob Meerburg?], ca. 1775. 8vo. Dutch poetry celebrating the liberation of Leiden, with 2 poems set to psalm melodies (using diamond-head music type). Contemporary marbled wrappers.
| Orders and Information | € 250 |
First and only edition of the only published work of a "pathetic rubbish-poet" (NNBW): a book of Dutch poetry on the 1774 celebration of the two-hundredth anniversary of the liberation of Leiden from the Spaniards in 1574. The liberation of Leiden is one of the most famous events in the history of the Netherlands. By flooding Rijnland, Delft and Schieland, the Dutch where able to sail to Leiden and break the Spanish siege, an event still celebrated every year on 3 October. An anonymous third party (perhaps a Leiden University student?) appears to have arranged its publication as a joke: an amusing note to the bookseller Meerburg from an unidentified party who supplied Van Booren's text notes that booksellers don't care what they publish as long as they earn money; Van Booren's authentication statement says he considers all copies signed by him NOT good (there are presumably no signed copies); and the note to the reader saying the book would have appeared earlier but for the author's "humility" also appears to be toung-in-cheek. The first letters in the lines of one poem spell the author's name.
The present poems brought the school teacher Elias van Booren (1728-1797) fame as the worst Dutch poet ever: "ellendiger rijmelarij is er welligt ter zulker gelegendheid nimmer in het licht gezonden" ("worse doggerel for such an occasion has surely never seen the light," Van der Aa), and 30 years later he remained a standard for judging bad poetry. His book now also gives us insights into the events of the celebration and the flavour of eighteenth-century patriotic sentimentalism.
In very good condition. Wrappers Tattered. Poems celebrating the liberation of Leiden, by the worst Dutch poet.
