8vo. 15pp, [1]. Twentieth-century gilt-tooled buckram. Some browning to text. The Foyle copy, with gilt-tooled morocco Beeleigh Abbey booklabel to FEP, above another more recent example. An early manuscript addition to the title after 'As it is Acted on the Stage' reads 'Of ye: World'.

First published in 1705, the prolific English satirist Edward 'Ned' Ward's (1667-1731) Honesty in Distress follows the eponymous young woman's journey to Court and the various traders (including an apothecary, a grocer, a baker, a hosier and a vintner) of the City of London in Queen Anne's England, via the lawyers of Westminster Hall who deem her 'a saucy Jade' and the merchants of the Exchange, who direct her to 'our Churches'.

This penny edition, a piracy produced by Henry Hills printed on poor quality paper, was as with the majority of Ward's prodigious verse output, designed to be consumed. Consequently, ESTC locates just three copies in the UK (Cambridge, NLS and Regent's Park), and only nine further elsewhere (Alexander Turnbull, Cornell, Harvard, Michigan, LoC, Northwestern, Rice and Texas (2)).