Unpublished typescript of annotated edition by Stephen Wheeler of the 1808 poem 'The Dun Cow' (sometimes attributed to Walter Savage Landor or his brother Robert Eyres Landor), a defence of Dr Parr against the anonymous satire 'Guy's Porridge Pot'.

4to, [iv] + 50 + [i]. Text clear and complete. Good and tight in worn cloth quarter-binding, with labels on spine and front board. On the rectos of twenty-four of the leaves is a diplomatic transcription of a copy of the first edition, with notes by Wheeler on some of the reverses. At the end of the volume are three more pages of 'NOTES [S. Wheeler's]'. Laid down on both sides of the front free endpaper is a cutting of the entry on 'The Dun Cow' from Wise and Wheeler's 'Bibliography of the writings in prose and verse of Walter Savage Landor' (1919). Laid down on both sides of the first leaf of the item is a lengthy newspaper cutting of an article by 'S. W.' (with autograph correction and his avowal of authorship: 'By Stephen Wheeler') in the series 'Other Men's Books', with the stamped date 31 December 1915. The article concerns Landor's friendship with Parr, dealing in particular with 'Guy's Porridge Pot' and 'The Dun Cow'. Wheeler states: 'I never believed [Landor] was guilty of a scurrilous lampoon on Dr. Parr [i.e. 'Guy's Porridge Pot'], and such it was. And now, having come across a copy of "The Dun-Cow," I find it is a retort to the first edition of "Guy's Porridge Pot"; just such a retort, moreover, as Landor in his younger days might well be supposed to have written in his solicitude for a friend's reputation.' Wheeler's opinion in this matter is to be taken seriously, as he edited Walter Savage Landor's poetry in four volumes, 1933-1936, in the collected edition in which T. E. Welby edited the prose (12 vols, 1927-1931). The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature states that the Dun Cow is 'probably not' the work of Walter Savage Landor. For more on the attribution of Guy's Pepper Pot to one or other of the Landor brothers see two articles in The Library: R. H. Super's 'The Authorship of Guy's Porridge Pot and the Dun Cow' (1950) and Roman Czerwinski's 'Robert Landor and Guy's Porridge Pot' (1961). The first edtion of the 'Dun Cow' remains the only one to appear. The full title of the poem is 'The Dun Cow; An Hyper-Satirical Dialogue, in Verse. With Explanatory Notes' (London: Printed by W. and T. Darton, 40, Holborn-Hill. 1808).