Quarto. [2], iv, [6], 412pp. A variant, with leaf A1 cancelled and replaced by one with a woodcut headpiece, with a woman holding a flaming heart in the central compartment, flanked by two angels. Contemporary gilt-ruled mottled calf, recently rebacked, recent contrasting red calf lettering-piece. Boards worn. Marbled endpapers, paper repair to head of front blank fly-leaf, small stain to lower corner of leaf F2.

Samuel Wesley the younger (1690/1-1739), Church of England clergyman, schoolmaster and minor poet. Eldest brother of both Charles and John Wesley, Samuel’s poetic subjects included theology, satire, politics and romance. Of all his works here printed, it was the hymns that were to have the most lasting impact. ‘A Hymn to God the Father’ and ‘An Hymn to God the Son’, incorporated in several Wesleyan hymnals throughout the eighteenth- and nineteenth- centuries, are the first two pieces featured in this volume.