Besides Pope, Akenside has been very well served by this year's publications. Robin Dix's comprehensive edition of Akenside's Political Works - the first of its kind - is a great event and an impressive scholarly achievement. The edition contains all of Akenside's published and posthumous poetry, reproduced with original accidentals, typograghical eccentricities and spelling, along with a full textual apparatus. A substantial commentary elucidates a large number of references and allusions, and a general introduction supplies the critical and biographical background. Both versions of The Pleasures of (the) Imagination are printed in full, although (reasonably enough) the odes only appear in the final form and order which they assumed in 1772. Editors have to make difficult judgments, and not everyone will agree with Dix's decision to take as his copy-text the fifth editions of 1754; we lose the freshness of the earliest version of The Pleasures which, on Pope's recommendation, burst onto the poetic scene of 1744.
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