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FIRST EDITION. 12mo, 175 x 104 mms., pp. iv, 5 - 94 [95 Stationer's Hall registration, 96 blank], bound in not-so-recent quarter dark green morocco, linen boards, gilt spine; first six leaves are mounted on stubs, the title-page is slightly frayed and is firmly attached to the recto of the preceding leaf, ex-library with bookplate of City of Nottingham Public Libraries on front paste-down end-paper, with bookseller's note in pencil on recto of front free-endpaper. A pencil annotation at the top of page 5 identifies the author os some of the poems: "Many of these verses were written by Wm Singleton." "On Christmas Day" on page 26 is "By the Rev. J Moon." The preface begins, "The following original Poems and Hymns, ae published for the benefit of the Methodist Sunday School in Nottingham."; ad ends: "The Poems andHymns are all new, what other excellencies they have I leave to the Reader to determine, - if they be of use to any one, God shall have all the glory." The present copy appears to be unique in naming, with a manuscript note, one of the main authors of the poetry, who is not named in the printed text of the book. A pencilled annotation at the top of page 5 reads, "Many of these pieces were written by Wm Singleton." Notably, there is no author named William Singleton recorded in the online Jackson Bibliography of Romantic Poetry. There was also no writer named William Singleton found by James Ward in his extensive Descriptive Catalogue of Books Relating to Nottinghamshire (1892). Yet there is a well-known William Singleton who flourished in Nottingham in the 1790s, and he is very likely indeed to be the author of these poems. This is the William Singleton credited with founding a pioneering school for adult learning: "In 1798 … an Adult Sunday School for Bible reading and instruction in the secular arts of writing and arithmetic was opened in a room belonging to the Methodist New Connection in Nottingham, by William Singleton, himself a Methodist. He had help from a Quaker tradesman, Samuel Fox, who afterwards became specially identified with the school. Before long it came, indeed, to be principally conducted by Mr. Fox… " (John Wilhelm Rowntree and Henry Bryan Binns, A History of the Adult School Movement (1903), p. 10). In this copy there is also one other manuscript annotation giving an author attribution on page 26. The single poem titled "On Christmas Day" is said to be by "the Rev. J Moon." he only other copy of this first edition that I have located is the one held by Cambridge University Libraries, and their online catalogue does not mention any manuscript annotations. The copy on offer is therefore most likely to be not only an extremely rare example of the text as first printed, but additionally significant historically for its being uniquely embellished with authorship attributions in manuscript.
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