Two Lyric Epistles: One to my Cousin Shandy, on his coming to town; And the other To the grown gentlewomen, the Misses of ****

London: for R & J Dodsley, 1760. Book. 4to, stitched. Pp. 23; wanting the half-title. Light running stain to lower right, a good, untrimmed copy. First edition. John Hall-Stevenson entertained a coterie of rakes, wits and eccentrics at his Skelton Castle, among them Laurence Sterne, who made frequent use of its library. Published shortly after the appearance of Tristram Shandy, the first of these coarse macaronics is addressed to Sternes' title character and is signed "Antony Shandy," by which name Sterne came to address his friend, upon whom he had based one of the characters in the novel. The second poem is a bawdy satire on courtship, seduction and marriage. Tristram Shandy spawned an industry of favorable, unfavorable and imitative responses, of which the present work is the first. ESTC; NCBEL 2, 685..