12mo. viii, 144pp. Contemporary tree-calf, contrasting red morocco lettering-piece, gilt. Rubbed and marked, later sympathetic repairs to upper joint, short split to foot of lower joint. Inscriptions of George Gore, along with other pen-trials, to blank fly-leaves and dedication leaf, some marginal worming at end.

The rare first Irish edition of a little known, entirely spurious and understandably comedic prose 'life' of the fictional draper from Cheapside, John Gilpin, star of William Cowper's ballad 'The diverting history of john gilpin'.

Cowper's verse, which follows Gilpin on an intended journey to the Bell Inn, Edmondton, during which he became separated from his family and was taken by an out of control horse to a town ten miles distant, had first appeared, anonymously, in the Public Advertiser (1782). The poem's popularity was immortalised in a series of performances at Freemason's Hall by the acclaimed Shakespearean actor John Henderson (1747-1785), and well capitalised upon by the London ballad and print trade, as well as by provincial stage-managers. This present attempt, in thirteen chapters, at telling the earlier and post ballad-journey life of the unfortunate Gilpin is (perhaps unsurprisingly, given the desire for popularity by association) dedicated to Henderson. It includes a narrative re-telling of the abortive trip to the Bell as Chapter X, 'How he intended to have dined at Edmondton, and was carried Ten Miles beyond it', as well as reprinting the verse original 'as read repeatedly with the greatest applause by Mr. Henderson'.

All editions of this fictional work, first published by S. Bladon (London, 1785) and reprinted twice there in the same year, are rare; ESTC locates only four copies of this first Irish edition in the British Isles (BL, Cambridge, Dublin and NLI) and just three elsewhere (Princeton, Rutgers and Nebraska-Lincoln).