STRICTURES ON HARVARD UNIVERSITY. -- PERSONAL SATIRE IS WORTHY OF LITTLE NOTICE-- IT IS SELDOM JUST. BY A SENIOR

Boston: Printed and Sold by John W. Folsom, 1798. 35, [1 blank] pp. Disbound, untrimmed, light rubberstamp, light foxing and mild wear. One small margin hole just touches a couple of letters, but does not obscure them. Good+.

Austin, to whom DAB attributes authorship, graduated from Harvard in 1798. Among his classmates were Joseph Story and William Ellery Channing. "Now forgotten, William Austin was a prominent literary figure of his time, and an acute critic of law and politics of the early nineteenth century. He ... wrote 'Strictures on Harvard University' soon after graduation." His most famous work, 'Peter Rugg, the Missing Man', foreshadows themes later taken up by Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe. See, Joyce Carol Oates [editor], THE OXFORD BOOK OF AMERICAN SHORT STORIES [second edition] pages 31 et seq. Fullerton [page 16] says that, after Washington Irving, "he was the best of the early American short story writers."
This pamphlet consists of six Numbers, each critically and humorously examining "the frigid zone of Harvard."
Evans 33344. ESTC W3579. Sabin 30763.