Goldsmith, Oliver [with] James Beattie [with] George Crabbe. The Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith [with] The Minstrel and other Poems [with] The Village and other Poems.. Orr, William S. & Co. London. 1848.

 vi, 71 + 71 + 86 pages. Jones's Diamond Classics, volume 18. Original yellow endpapers. All edges gilt. Contemporary ink signature on front free endpaper. Provenance: H. Gordon Smith. Some mild ageing. 60 x 96 mm. Original roccoco style gilt decorated maroon cloth. Spine with gilt blocked titling and decoration. Very slightly rubbed, faded, and corners slightly bumped. Not in Welsh in the Orr editions. OCLC, 8116229 and 53168319. This specific volume is a fascinating artifact of mid-19th-century British publishing. While these three poets are titans of 18th-century literature, their combination in a single 1848 edition by William S. Orr & Co. reveals a lot about the "Victorian canon" and the evolution of social commentary in verse. The most compelling aspect of this grouping is the thematic thread connecting the three authors. They represent a specific shift in British poetry toward the rural and the realistic. Famous for The Deserted Village, Goldsmith mourned the loss of the peasantry to industrialisation and greedy landlords. Beattie's work The Minstrel explores the development of a poet's mind in harmony with nature (a major precursor to Romanticism). Known as "Nature's sternest painter," Crabbe rejected the "pretty" version of country life. His poem The Village was a gritty, realistic retort to Goldsmith’s more sentimental views. Putting them together creates a "conversation" between the poets about the reality of English country life. Goldsmith represents the Augustan age (polished, heroic couplets). Beattie bridges the gap toward Romanticism (focus on individual emotion). Crabbe introduces Realism. By 1848—the year of revolutions across Europe—Victorians were looking back at these poets to understand the social changes that had transformed Britain from an agrarian society into an industrial powerhouse.