Lot 3897: [Brome, Alexander, editor ] , Ratts rhimed to death. Or, The Rump-Parliament hang'd up in the shambles. London: [no publisher], 1660

8vo (164 x 105mm.), [6], 89, [1]pp., binding: contemporary sheep, double fillets in blind on covers, without first and last blanks, binding rubbed

Wing R307

EDITOR
An unusual collection of Royalist rhymes, satires and so on. "The importance of Ratts Rhimed to Death actually derives from a number of unique features of the collection: it is, for example, the first miscellany in English to be consciously devoted to street ballads, while the uniformly topical and political nature of the satires of which it is comprised marks it as the first true collection of what was shortly to become an immensely popular form of miscellany, the anthologized 'poems on affairs of state'" (Mark McDayter, online edition of Rump: An exact collection, http://ett.arts.uwo.ca/rump/site/welcome.html). In "To the reader", the work appears to refer to itself as a second edition, but no earlier edition appears extant. It was however expanded later in the year and published as The Rump, or a collection of songs and ballads, made upon those who would be a Parliament, and were but the rump of an House of Commons, five times dissolv'd.