Early Nineteenth-Century Devotional Verse, in a Penny Chapbook

Our Saviour.
London: Printed by J. Catnach, [ca. 1830]. (BRB0958)

A previously unrecorded survival of a penny chapbook published by James Catnach (1792–1841), the devotional verse in this small pamphlet is illustrated with particularly fine and striking woodcut illustrations. Beginning in 1813 Catnach printed a wide range of cheap broadsides, children’s books, and topical verses concerning murders, hangings, dying confessions, current events, and scandals. In a much different realm, the main verse in Our Savior is modeled on the poem “My Mother” by Ann Taylor (1783–1866), with each quatrain ending in “Our Savior!”