Detailed Description

This edition of The Fleece by John Dyer (the 'Grongar Hill' poet) marks the 250th anniversary of the poem's first publication.  A fine example of an 18th Century 'Georgic' with Virgil behind it and composed in his Miltonic sytle The Fleece is concerned with the wool trade and follows the progress of the fleece from the sheep's back through the various processes of textile manufacture to its exportation abroad along the arteries of global commerce.  Book I introduces the reader to land management veterinary science shepherding and the sheep-breeding revolution;     Books II-III discuss enclosure canals and other communications systems the manufacturing processes and machinery involved in the treatment of wool while also surveying the history of the woollen industry; Book IV explores the network of trade routes across both hemispheres.  In telling us a great deal about the 18th Century's emergent ideologies and practices the poem casts light on that centry in its boldest and most creative mode full of enlightenment confidence in the perfectability of human experience.     Never having been adequately annotated before the text of The Fleece here - that of the first edition the only text seen through the press by its author - is supported by extensive explanatory endnotes indentifying Dyer's sources his contributions to social economic and cultural life and stylistic points of interest since the poem previously has received little critical discussion of this sort.  The present volume also has an informative introduction outlining Dyer's life and situation the poem in its historical and literary contexts together with a reproduction of the title-page from the original edition.     This new scholarly edition has been specially prepared for the Cyder Press by Dr. John Goodridge Nottingham Trent University and Juan Christian Pellicer Universityof Oslo.