AN ATTEMPT TOWARDS A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE HANOVER RAT. Dedicated to T***m. M******r, M.D. and Secretary to the Royal Society.

[FIELDING, Henry?]

Published by London: printed for M. Cooper in Pater-noster-row, 1744

About this Item

8vo in fours, pp. [iv], viii, 24; a good clean copy; disbound. First and only edition of a very rare anonymous pamphlet which has for nearly a century been attributed to Fielding. His target here is the necessity for the British public purse to pay for some sixteen thousand Hanoverian troops fighting against France: he compares them to a biblical plague, and analyses their behaviour in Royal Society style: 'It is a received Opinion, that the Ostridge can digest Iron: The Hanover Rat hath a much stronger Digestion; for it doth not only digest Iron, but Steel, Brass, Pewter, Tin, Copper, Silver, and Gold, (of the two last it is particularly fond) and in fine every Thing that comes within its Clutches, and every Animal it can overcome without Danger' (pp. 7-8). The suggestion that this pamphlet, published in November 1744, just a few days after Charlotte Fielding's funeral, was by Fielding himself, was first made by G.E. Jensen in 1935; it has since been accepted by NCBEL (II 929) and by Battestin ('almost certainly by Fielding, as most scholars agree'). It is a significant addition to the Fielding canon. See Battestin, Henry Fielding, a Life, pp. 387-8 and 664 note 202. For the original attribution, see G.E. Jensen in Yale University Library Gazette 10 (1936), pp. 23-32.

Seller Inventory # 26666

Bibliographic Details

• Title: AN ATTEMPT TOWARDS A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE HANOVER RAT. Dedicated to T***m. M******r, M.D. and Secretary to the Royal Society.
• Publisher: London: printed for M. Cooper in Pater-noster-row
• Publication Date: 1744
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