The Literary Papers of
the Reverend Jermyn Pratt
1723–1791
map of Norfolk, courtesy of the Norfolk Record Office.
Norfolk Record Society, Volume 86
Published 2022
The Reverend Jermyn Pratt was a close friend of the poet Christopher Smart, who mentions Pratt in the poem for which he is most famous, Jubilate Agno. After his studies at Cambridge University, Pratt ministered to rural parishes in the fenland region of north-west Norfolk. A collection of manuscripts and printed texts, contained within a large folder in the Norfolk Record Office, reveals that Pratt was himself an imaginative and idiosyncratic writer of humorous and satirical works, which bear the imprint of the human and natural environment in which they were written.
This is a carefully transcribed, generously illustrated and extensively annotated edition of Pratt’s literary papers. It includes Pratt’s play The Grange, his comic essay The Zgubbs, his long poems The Inundation or The Life of a Fen-Man, The Coal-Heavers, and September: A Rural Poem, together with many shorter poems and other writings. This edition makes the literary papers of a unique and previously unknown eighteenth-century writer widely available for the first time.
Price: £25.00
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Overview
This substantial scholarly edition presents the full range of Jermyn Pratt’s surviving writings, offering a rare insight into the literary culture of eighteenth‑century Norfolk and the creative life of a provincial clergyman. The volume is organised into five major sections, dramatic works, longer poems, shorter poems, longer prose writings and shorter prose pieces, each revealing a different facet of Pratt’s intellectual and imaginative world. Together, they demonstrate the breadth of his interests, from rural life and local politics to clerical identity, literary satire, and speculative humour.
At the heart of the collection is The Grange, Pratt’s lively dramatic work, accompanied by an occasional prologue to The Clandestine Marriage. His longer poems The Inundation or The Life of a Fen-Man, The Coal-Heavers, and September: A Rural Poem offer vivid depictions of the fenland landscape and its communities, while the shorter poems range from political squibs and fables to epitaphs, comic verses, and pieces preserved in local newspapers. The prose writings include The Zgubbs, an eccentric mock‑philosophical treatise on imaginary beings, and A Modest Address to Lewis Lord Bishop of Norwich, a spirited defence of the Norfolk clergy.
The editors provide extensive contextual and textual commentary throughout, supported by a detailed introduction, a Pratt family tree, and a clear statement of editorial conventions. A rich set of appendices includes manuscript variants, contemporary responses to Pratt’s political verses, a letter from Charles Davy and a catalogue of Pratt’s library, offering valuable evidence of his reading habits and intellectual milieu.
By bringing these diverse materials together for the first time, the volume restores Jermyn Pratt to the literary and cultural landscape of his period. It illuminates the networks of sociability, print, and manuscript circulation that shaped eighteenth‑century provincial life, and it offers scholars a significant new resource for the study of regional writing, clerical authorship, and the broader history of eighteenth‑century literature.
Archival sources
Illustrations, Plates, Figures, Maps and Appendices
- Illustrations: 0
- Plates: 9
- Figures: 12
- Maps: 0
- Appendices: 7
Supported by
This publication was generously supported by: Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society.
Editors and contributors
- Editors: Ema Vyroubalová and James Robert Wood
- Honorary Society Editor: Anthony Howe
Publication details
- Series: Norfolk Record Society, Volume LXXXVI (86)
- Publisher: Norfolk Record Society
- Year: 2022
- Period: Modern
- Type of Volume: Thematic
- ISBN: 9780995773653
- Number of Pages: 402
- Format: Hardback
- Language: English
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Recommended citation
Vyroubalová, E and Wood, J. R. (eds.), The Literary Papers of the Reverend Jermyn Pratt 1723–1791, Norfolk Record Society, Vol. 86 (2022).
Keywords
Jermyn Pratt, Norfolk Literature, 18th‑Century Writing, Christopher Smart, Satire and Poetry, Ryston
About the editors
Ema Vyroubalová is Assistant Professor in the School of English at Trinity College, Dublin and author of articles and book chapters on Shakespeare and Renaissance literature.
James Robert Wood is Associate Professor in Eighteenth-Century Literature at the University of East Anglia and author of Anecdotes of Enlightenment: Human Nature from Locke to Wordsworth (2019).
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Last updated: January 2026