The True-born English-man: A Satyr - Daniel Defoe - 1716

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The True-born English-man: A Satyr – Daniel Defoe – 1716

Short Description

A rare item by Daniel Defoe. The scarce “enlarged” edition printed and sold by James Roberts in 1716.

Small pocket sized 12mo, 12, 26 pages, bound in contemporary calf backed boards, some age and wear but solid and rare in this original state.

First edition thus. After the accession of Hanover Defoe added a new passage of 49 lines satirizing the English temper. It was hastily published and contains a number of hasty error which ironically confirm its pedigree

A True-born English-man, satirical poem of length about xenophobia … a few could learn from it today. Dutch born William of Orange has become King of England, and there was much tittle tattle about his lack of Englishness. Defoe, forever a wit, wrote this is support of old William of O, ridiculing the notion of English racial purity. Well the evidence is there.

Defoe … much quoted from his opening rant

“that het’rogeneous thing, an Englishman:
In eager rapes, and furious lust begot
Betwixt a painted Britain and a Scot
Whose gend’ring off-spring quickly learn’d to bow,
And yoke their heifers to the Roman plough:
From whence a mongrel half-bred race there came,
With neither name, nor nation, speech nor fame.
In whose hot veins new mixtures quickly ran,
Infused betwixt a Saxon and a Dane
While their rank daughters, to their parents just,
Receiv’d all nations with promiscuous lust.
This nauseous brood directly did contain
The well-extracted blood of Englishmen.”

Daniel Defoe and his True-born a delicious antiquarian rarity

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