It's a verse epic recounting the history of Britain from the earliest times (literally the earliest times) to the Battle of Britain. Wikipedia claims that "its entire first edition of 23,500 sold out immediately, even in wartime conditions, and was then reprinted". However, The Oxford National Biography says it "was largely ignored".
As far as I can tell, the text is not available anywhere online, which is not surprising considering it would still be in copyright.
I wonder how many people have read this work in the last few decades? Very few, I imagine, which is an added inducement for me to read it.
Why read this particular forgotten opus, when there are so many other neglected works which are even more off the beaten track, if not more so? Well, partly it's just serendipity. One of my Facebook friends posted a poem by Francis Brett Young, who I'd never heard of, and this got me reading up on him. But it's partly because I like the idea of an epic in verse, especially one with such a grandiose conception. I've sometimes toyed with reading the famous Polyolbion by John Drayton, a 15,000 line survey of British geography and history. But I find geography much more of a drudge than history, despite my burgeoning interest in place.
The copy in my own library is in Special Collections, which means I can't bring it home. So reading it will require added effort. It's more than four hundred pages long.
Not only do I intend to read it, but I intend to write about it here as I read it. So there's something for you to look forward to.
The copy in my own library is in Special Collections, which means I can't bring it home. So reading it will require added effort. It's more than four hundred pages long.
Not only do I intend to read it, but I intend to write about it here as I read it. So there's something for you to look forward to.
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