The volume is a fascinating example of Scottish literary collecting of the early 18th century. It includes an otherwise unrecorded, and earliest extant printing in Scotland, of Oroonoko, adapted for the stage by Thomas Southerne (1660-1746) from Restoration poet and playwright Aphra Behn’s (c.1640-1689) short novel of the same title. Popular play books were available cheaply in early 18th-century Edinburgh; whether copies of London editions sold on to local booksellers, or from the presses of local Scottish printers. The level of disposability that this would provoke accounts for the low survival rate of many of the works in this volume. The fact that someone collected the contents of this volume and had them bound together is most likely what has allowed these works to become survivors preserved for us today.