8vo. viii, [2], 346pp. Original publisher's blind-stamped green cloth, lettered in gilt. Extremities rubbed. Later bookplate to FEP, inked gift inscription to recto of FFEP.

The first edition of Chartist and religious lecturer Thomas Cooper's (1805-1892) first published work, a monumental 994 stanza 'Prison- rhyme', a radical political manifesto that was the fruit of two years and eleven weeks' spent in confinement at Stafford Gaol following a conviction related to the Pottery Riots of 1842. Indeed, Cooper notes in the introduction that 'the first six stanzas of the following poem may be considered as embodying a speech I delivered to the Colliers on strike, in the Staffordshire Potteries, on the 15th of August, 1842.

Though a commercial failure, the poem's ambition impressed not only the readers of the Chartist press but also the likes of Carlyle, Disraeli, and Kingsley.