Dimensions: 270 x 440 mm. Single leaf broadside. Printed in two columns, text within ornamental border, woodcut vignette at head.

A broadside production of one of Hannah More's (1745-1833) Cheap Repository Tracts, a collection of over 200 short, moralising tales supplied to the working-classes in an attempt to discourage insurrectionist spirit in the wake of the French Revolution. Patient Joe tells the story of a Newcastle collier who is cheerful and diligent despite his poverty. Unlike his fellow poor sinners, like 'idle Tim Jenkins, who drank and who gam'd', Patient Joe epitomises More's conservative philosophy by rewarding the poor man who happily accepts his pre-ordained place in society, encouraging a reverence for God's will and presenting an unfavourable view of social mobility.

ESTC records copies at two locations in the British Isles (BL and Oxford) and a further seven in North America (Huntington, Harvard, Indiana, McMaster, New York Public Library, Smith, and Yale).