8vo. [8], 68pp, [2]. With half-title. Modern calf-backed marbled boards, contrasting gilt-tooled red morocco lettering-piece to spine. Tearing to gutter margin of initial leaves, with no obstruction to text. Leaves browned, spotting.

'Edward: Yes, boys are the only scholars: indeed, we're the only clever fellows, and in love or in literature, at cards or at cricket, in short, from a battledore to a bullet, you'll find the young ones are a match for the old ones! So farewell, most ancient, perfect, finished composition.
Scatter: I defy him, my wife is a match for him, or the devil's in it.'

The first edition of prolific English dramatist and noted amateur cricketer Frederick Reynolds's (1764-1841) rural sea-port comedy Cheap Living, transcribed from its premiere performance at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on the 21st October, 1797.
Reynolds' plays, briefly fashionable and ultimately forgotten, are the subject of a barbed jibe in Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, as he insults the stage 'where Reynolds vents his 'dammes!' 'poohs!' and 'zounds!' / And common-place and common sense confounds.' The brief reference to cricket found in the fourth act reflects the author's association with Marylebone Cricket Club, for which he made two first-class appearances.