Ema Vyroubalová and James Robert Wood (eds). The Literary Papers of the Reverend Jermyn Pratt (1723–1791)

Abstract

It is often assumed that some of the people remembered by Christopher Smart in the last fragment of Jubilate Agno (1758–1763) visited him during his detention in Potter’s madhouse. Jermyn Pratt, Norfolk clergyman and Smart’s fellow student at Cambridge, might not have been among Smart’s visitors, but the ‘mad’ poet interceded for Pratt’s father and family nevertheless: ‘Let Ruston, house of Ruston rejoice with Fulviana Herba, ab inventore, good to provoke urine. Lord have mercy upon Roger Pratt and his family.’ Other references to Pratt, his sister Harriot (Smart’s former love), and their Norfolk home, Ryston Hall, feature in Smart’s writings. Pratt’s place in literary history has rested on his association with Smart until now. This noteworthy and enterprising volume, carefully prepared and annotated by Ema Vyroubalová and James Robert Wood, brings Pratt’s dramatic, poetic, and essayistic works into print, establishing him as ‘an imaginative and idiosyncratic writer in his own right’ (2). From the uproarious comedy The Grange (c. 1774) to the sobering tract A Modest Address to Lewis (c. 1784), Pratt’s literary papers provide fresh and lively insights into the culture, society, and politics of provincial Norfolk in the eighteenth century.