12mo. 35pp, [1]. With an engraved frontispiece. Uncut. Stitched, as issued. Contemporary inked ownership inscription to verso of frontispiece: 'Sarah Stevens / Wycombe Bucks / 1806', dust-soiled, small worm-track running through text-block - touching text at times, without loss of sense.

An early nineteenth-century edition of William Cowper's (1731-1800) immensely popular humorous poem. 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, 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.