Collection of hymns for the use of the people called Methodists.

602 printed pages. Engraved frontispiece by I. Bull of John Wesley at the age of 87 - a year before his death. All edges gilt. original grey endpapers. Contemporary ink ownership signature on verso of front free endpaper, dated 1823. Provenance: Louisa Hitchens. 45 x 70mm. Contemporary black morocco in a wallet style binding. Spine with gilt block lettering "WESLEY'S HYMNS", and three hand-tooled binder's decorative flourishes within tripe horizontal rules (slightly rubbed). Front an back covers with hand-tooled scrolling decorative gilt borders. Contains 559 hymns written mostly by John's brother Charles. An interesting variant of an edition of this much reprinted title, first published in 1780 & extolled by B.L. Manning as comparable with the Book of Psalms, the Book of Common Prayer and the Canon of the Mass. Wesley began work on it in September 1773, when he was confined to the New Room, Bristol by a heavy cold, and took it up again at Tullamore during his Irish tour in 1778. His Preface explains that it was published because of the number of earlier books in use; the most important of these, Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1753) being too small (only 84 hymns). Spielmann, 511. Welsh, 4932. WorldCat locates only 4 copies (British Library, Oxford Brookes, National Library of Scotland and Ohio Wesleyan University). OCLC, 314889792.