Temora, an ancient epic poem, In eight books

4to. f. [1] (blank), pp. [4], xxxiv, [2], 247, [1] (blank). Signatures: pi²a-d⁴e²B-2I⁴. Calf. Gilt tooled spine, red lettering panel. Title page engraved by Isaac Taylor. Includes press figures. Bookplate of Franz Pollack-Parnau. In English with a poem in Gaelic.

Not translated, but in fact by James Macpherson. After the massive success of his work ‘Fingal’ (see Bib# 4656328/Fr# 621 in this collection), Macpherson followed it up with the present work, another Ossianic poem, and reputed to be Napoleon’s favorite. This time it was nearly all of his own creation, and described by his modern editor Howard Gaskill as ‘almost entirely fraudulent.’ Macpherson provided a twenty-page ‘specimen’ of Book VII of ‘Temora’ in Erse in this volume, but back-translating the rest ‘was not a task to be relished, as Macpherson found to his cost, when [...] obliged to undertake it in the decade or so before his death’ (H. Gaskill, Ossian revisited. Edinburgh, 1991, p. 13). See ESTC, T137081.

Click here to view the Johns Hopkins University catalog record.