Contents

of

Ballads and Songs

by

Edward Capern, Rural Postman of Bideford

London, W. Kent & Co. (Late D. Bogue), 86 Fleet Street. Printed, J. Unwin, Gresham Steam Press, Bucklesbury, London (1859) 210pp.

Prepared by Michael Steer

Edward Capern was born at Tiverton in 1819. His father was a baker. The family moved to Barnstaple where at 8 years of age he found work for 20 hours a day and a pittance for wages, in a lace-making factory. He went from there to Bideford where he became nationally famous as a rural postman-poet. The Press of its day said of the book "These honest, fresh, lusty verses are written by the Postman of Bideford ; a man who, happy in the possession of the faculty of rhyme, works hard, lives hard, and sleeps hard, without a murmur ; though beset with trials, and much knocked about the head by Fortune. Such unkind blows ripen some men's brains, and so they seem to have done Mr. Capern's". An original copy is held at the University of Toronto Library and a complete electronic copy may be accessed at:
https://archive.org/details/balladsandsongs00capeuoft
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