The Pleader's Guide, A Didactic Poem, in Two Books Containing the Conduct of a Suit at Law, With the Arguments of Counsellor Bother'um, and Counsellor Bore'um, in the action betwixt John-a-Gull, and John-a-Gudgeon, for Assault and Battery, at a late Contested Election. Book II [BOUND WITH] Prospectus and Specimen of an Intended National Work, by William and Robert Whistlecraft, of Stow-Market, in Suffolk, Harness and Collar-Makers. Intended to Comprise the Most Interesting Particulars Relating to King Arthur and His Round Table. Third Edition [BOUND WITH] Giuseppino: An Occidental Story [BOUND WITH] All the Talents; A Satirical Poem, in Three Dialogues. By Polypus. Eleventh Edition

FOUR RARE ENGLISH SATYRICAL POEMS AND TRACTS, INCLUDING SHANNON'S GIUSEPPINO

8vo, bound in contemporary half calf and marbled paper over boards, gilt-tooled lettering to spine, 4 works in 1 vol.: SURREBUTTER, John (pseud. of John ANSTEY). The Pleader's Guide…Book II. London, T. Caddell, Jun. and W. Davies, 1802, pp. vi, vi, 90, [2] [bound with] WHISTECRAFT, Robert and William (pseud. of John Hookham FRERE). Prospectus and Specimen of an Intended National Work… Relating to King Arthur and His Round Table. Third Edition. London, John Murray, 1818, pp. vii [1], 55, [1], 61, [1], containing all 4 cantos [bound with] [SHANNON, Edward N.] Giuseppino: An Occidental Story. London, Longman, 1821, pp. [2], 64, after the style of Byron's Beppo [bound with] POLYPUS (pseud. of Eaton Stannard BARRETT). All the Talents… Eleventh Edition. London, John Stockdale, 1807, pp. xv (missing half-title), [1], 81, [1]. The bookplate of the early owner H. R. Evans, Esq., is glued to the front pastedown, just below a ms. inscription which states that the book was a gift for his son. Evans, from Ely, Cambridgeshire, was Receiver and Expenditor-General to the Honourable Corporation of Bedford Level. Light wear to binding extremities, softened upper joint (yet still holding tight to the spine), some spotting to title-page of first work, otherwise internally clean and in very good condition. Old newspaper cutting with obituary of Right Hon. John Hookham Frere glued to verso of errata leaf of the first work bound in the book (The Pleader's Guide, Book II). Some early annotations to front endpapers. Four early-C19th pseudonymous English satirical tracts, some of which are quite rare. John Anstey (died 1819) was an English poet and barrister. He was the second son of Christopher Anstey, and was a barrister of Lincoln's Inn and a commissioner for auditing public accounts. Under pseudonym, he wrote the first book of The Pleader's Guide in 1796 and the second in 1802. This work has a great deal of humour, though chiefly of a legal kind. The second work is the third edition of a mock-heroic Arthurian poem in 4 parts by an English diplomat, the Right Hon. Frere. The fourth edition slightly changed title, being published as "The Monk and the Giants: Prospectus and Specimen of."etc."This humorous poem is a happy illustration of the Pulci and Casti school of versification, afterwards so successfully adopted by Byron in his Beppo and Don Juan" (Lowndes, The bibliographer's Manual of English Literature, p. 840). The third work, which is attributed to the Irish author E. N. Shannon, is the rare and sought-after first edition of a parody in verse that imitates the romantic style of Lord Byron with reference to his poem Beppo. Indeed, Beppo is the Italian nickname for Giuseppe, or Giuseppino. "A cleaver poet [Shannon] whose pieces were actually attributed to Lord Byron by some" (O'Donoghue, The Poets of Ireland: a Biographical and Bibliographical Dictionary of Irish Writers of English Verse, Dublin, Figgis, 1912, p. 420; on Shannon, see Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English, The Romantic Period, 1789-1850, Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980, Vol. I: born 1795 - died 1860, contributor to The Nation, and editor of Galway Vindicator; author of Giuseppino: An Occidental Story (1821) and The Crazed maid of Venice and Other Poems (1826), both in Byronic verse; A Translation of Dante (1836); Tales Old and New and other Poems (1842)). The last work is by an Irish author too, that is, E. S. Barrett, and mocks British politics and, in particular, the Whig party and the short-lived Ministry of All Talents, which was a national unity government formed during the Napoleonic wars by William Grenville, 1st Baron Grenville, on his appointment as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on 11 February 1806, following the death of William Pitt the Younger. All the Talents was published nearly twenty times in less than a year. The present eleventh edition was issued without the famous engraved frontispiece plate (see O'Donoghue, The Poets of Ireland, p. 19).