Author: LOVE (John), compiler:
Title: The New Waymouth Guide: Or, Useful Pocket Companion: Containing A Description of Waymouth, the Mineral Spring, at Nottington, And whatever is worthy of Notice at, or going to, the following Places: Portland, Abbotsbury, Bridport, Sherborne, Dorchester Blandford, Lulworth, Corse Castle, Poole, Wareham, Winborn &c.
Description: Waymouth: Printed for, and sold by J. Love, at his Repertory, on the Esplanade..., no date, [1788] FIRST EDITION. 8vo (in 4s), 178 x 122 mms., pp. [5] 6 - 67 [68 advert for Phoenix Fire Office), including half-title, later wrappers. A very good copy. At some time after 1762 the engraver and and (later) forger William Wynne Ryland (1733 - 1783) took John Love (1751/2 - 1793) as an apprentice. Unfortunately, in his 50th year, Ryland issued two forged bills drawn on the East India Company, and he was hanged. Love might have left his apprenticeship when Ryland went bankrupt in 1777, but by 1783 he was no longer associated with Ryland. The advert on the verso of the last leaf suggests that he had acquired some financial nous, as he was insuring "Houses, Buildings, and Ships" at this time. He was also noted for his corpulence: The New Wonderful Museum, and Extraordinary Magazine (London, 1805) described him as follows: "About this time he was remarkably thin, and became at last so lean and puny that his friends dreaded a consumption. According to the advice of his physicians he had every kind of delicious nutriment, which gave him such a habit of ease and indulgence, that Mr. Love gave himself up entirely to wine and dainties. When he became a bookseller in Weymouth, he gave full scope to his desires; through over eating and drinking he now grew as remarkably heavy and corpulent as he was before light and thin—his weight and bulk were the astonishment of all beholders; he was obliged (as our print, which is a striking likeness, shows) to have the waistband of his breeches nearly up to his chin, in order to prevent their failing off; he was seldom seen in a coat at home as he could not bear the confinement of sleeves ; he would frequently eat and drink in his night gown. At last, suffocated by fat, he paid the general debt of nature in the forty first year of his age, and was buried at Weymouth, October, 1793. When living he weighed 26 stone, or 368 pounds. The coffin and corpse is supposed to have weighed about a tun altogether. He was obliged to be put out of the window, and conveyed down by ropes on two pieces of timber." Dr. George Cheyne (1671/2 - 1743) probably outweighed him: at his heaviest he weighed just over 200 kilos (440 pounds) Uncommon. ESTC T66353 locates copies at BL (2), Bodleian, and McMaster.

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