Author: WILKES (Thomas):
Title: The Golden Farmer A Poem. Humbly Inscrib'd to the Right Honourable Wlliam [sic] Lord Craven.
Description: London: Printed for T. Payne..., 1723. FIRST AND ONLY EDITION. Folio, 353 x 235 mms., pp. [iv], 8, including half-title, engraved head- and tail-piece, recent wrappers; half-title and page 8 slightly soiled. With an inscription on the half-title crossed out and another added, "To The Right Honble Lord Noel Somerset, the Gift of the Author." Wilkes has also made two authorial corrections and added a couplet on page 6. Thomas Wilkes (1677/8 - 1745) was a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, and rector of Hempsteed, near Gloucester. The poem describes a rich farmer of Sparsholt in the White-Horse Vale, "The Galen of the Neighbourhood" famous for the medicinal qualities of his herbs and flowers. One wonders if Wilkes had heard of the thief John Bennet [Bennett], alias William Freeman or Hill, also called the Golden Farmer (d. 1690), for whom the subject of his poem would probably not have had much sympathy. Foxon W 460. ESTC T75076 locates copies in BL (2, one being the author's presentation copy with MS. corrections, including the "i" in William on the title page, and ms. additions), Leeds; Harvard, Huntington, Newbery, Princeton, Clark, Chicago, Texas, and Yale. There is also a copy in the Bodleian.

Keywords: poetry agriculture literature


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