THE POET'S RAMBLE AFTER RICHES: with reflections upon a country corporation. Also, the author's lamentation in the time of adversity. By the author of the Trip to Jamaica. The third edition.

[WARD, Ned.]

Published by London printed and sold by J. How in the Ram-Head-Inn-yard in Fanchurch-street, 1701

About this Item

Folio, pp. 16; slight browning, else a very good copy, in 19th-century half calf, gilt, red morocco label (crude tape repair to top of spine). Third edition of Ned Ward's first published poem (first published in 1691), a humorous account of his trip from London to his ancestral home in Leicestershire, written in Hudibrastic couplets. There is some evidence that his family had at one time been fairly affluent, but he concludes this poem with a 36-line 'lamentation', which provides what was no doubt an accurate description of his poverty, when he was in his mid-twenties. The envoi ends as follows: O had you but seen, the sad State I was in, You'd not find such a Poet in Twenty, I'd nothing that's full, but my Shirt and my Scull, For my Guts and my Pockets were empty. As true as I Live, I have but one Sleeve, Which I wear in the room of a Cravat, In this plight I wait, to get an Estate, But the Devil knows when I shall have it. Wing assigns to Ward a poem printed in 1690 called The School of Politicks: or the Humours of a Coffee-House, but there is no firm evidence that he wrote it. By the time this third edition of his first acknowledged poem was issued, he had achieved a certain degree of popularity with his Trip to Jamaica. Foxon W141; Troyer pp. 10-12 and 262. All early printings of The Poet's Ramble after Riches are rare. ESTC lists only three copies of the first edition of 1691 (BL, Yale and Harvard), and four copies of the present printing (BL, Huntington, Clark and Texas).

Seller Inventory # 23872

Bibliographic Details

• Title: THE POET'S RAMBLE AFTER RICHES: with reflections upon a country corporation. Also, the author's lamentation in the time of adversity. By the author of the Trip to Jamaica. The third edition.
• Publisher: London printed and sold by J. How in the Ram-Head-Inn-yard in Fanchurch-street
• Publication Date: 1701
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Seller catalogs:
  • Poetry