Isabella; or, The pot of basil and other poems /
Young, Robert.
H. W. Y.,editor.
Printed at Elgin : [s.n.],
1878.
The publication is likely connected to the Young Family of Burghead, eight miles south-east of Elgin. The book's editor, H. W. Y., may well be Hugh W. Young, F.S.A. Scot, a well-known local antiquary of Burghead and environs. There are several references to London in the book as well as Scottish content: two poems are devoted to a Dinmont Terrier, a Scottish Bred, and there is Scottish dialect used at a number of points in the book. There is a poem headed "Lines written in an old copy of Burns / presented to H. W. Y., 1873", in which the author identifies himself as the brother of "H. W. Y." The combined information of two or three poems suggests that the author probably died in late 1877 or 1878. The long title poem of the book "Isobella; or, The pot of basil" likely involved some knowledge on the author's part of the poem by John Keats which is similarly titled, or of the work of Boccaccio, which is where Keats got his storyline.
Scotland Elgin.