Frontis, 23 plates and 12 woodcut vignettes by Edward Lambert. 8vo, contemporary black quarter calf, marbled sides, red leather label, gilt rules and lettering. First Edition.

A social reform novel that attacks the law that forbade the practice of peddling wares outside one’s own parish. Miller also swipes at other class inequities: a Baronet repeatedly attempts to abduct Gideon Giles’ daughter; a malevolent game-keeper sets his dog loose on a helpless woman; the poor are constantly driven to crime, immorality or madness. Much of this is based on Miller’s first-hand experience: he was “one of the very few Victorian novelists of proletarian origins” - Sutherland, Victorian Fiction. Miller, who became a bookseller with the aid of Samuel Rogers, was apprenticed at an early age to a basket-maker, thus earning him the nick-name “the basket-maker poet.”