Out of Scope: Unexpected Titles in the Rare Book Collections

Akenside (1721-1770), poet and physician, originally studied to become a pastor before switching his field to medicine. He began writing what would be published as The pleasures of imagination when he was seventeen.

The first book defines the powers of imagination and discusses the various kinds of pleasure to be derived from the perception of beauty; the second distinguishes works of imagination from philosophy; the third describes the pleasure to be found in the study of man, the sources of ridicule, the operations of the mind, in producing works of imagination, and the influence of imagination on morals.