The Adventures of Johnny Newcome in the Navy by John Mitford - 1819: A Poem in Four Cantos with Notes

Rare first edition of John Mitford's entertaining story of a young midshipman in Lord Nelson's Royal Navy.

First edition in book form, originally issued 1819 in eight monthly parts.

With twenty hand-colored aquatint engravings by Charles Williams, vii, 224 pages of text and 68 pages of Notes.

A cash-in imitation of Alfred Burton's Adventures... with illustrations by Thomas Rowlandson, published in 1818.

With lively illustrations of an apprentice midshipman's rambles in the brothels of Portsmouth, fighting the captain in the wardroom, locked in shackles in the gunroom, riding pigs through the market of Gibraltar, stealing planter's wives in the West Indies, humiliated by sailors when crossing the equator, and finally discharged at Greenwich Hospital.

John Mitford (1782-1831), joined the navy as midshipman on HMS Victory. He served on ships in battles in the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, Egypt and the West Indies. He was discharged from the navy as an insane alcoholic in 1814, and thereafter made a living as a writer and editor. He is sometimes credited as the author of the similar naval romp, Adventures of a Post Captain, 1817, also illustrated by Charles Williams. He published a book of his collected poetry in 1818, The Poems of a British Sailor, with poems written at Mitford Hall and on board naval ships all over the globe. When writing the Adventures of Johnny Newcome in 1819, he lived in an old gravel-pit in Battersea Fields and spent his fee on gin. In later years, he is said to have edited the New Bon Ton Magazine, 1818-1821. He is said to have lived over a coal-shed near Leicester Square and died in St. Giles's workhouse in 1831 while editing the Quizzical Gazette and Merry Companion.

Illustrator Charles Williams (died 1830) was a British caricaturist, etcher and illustrator. He illustrated the Rowlandson imitations Dr Syntax in Paris (1820), My Cousin In the Army (1822) and The Tour of Doctor Prosody (1822).

Half brown leather with paper label on spine, paper covered boards, plates and text pages with occasional offsetting and spotting, plates with deep hand colour.