The House that Jack Built: A Diverting Story for Children of All Ages. To Which is Added, Some Account of Jack Jingle. Shewing by Which Means he Acquired his Learning, and in Consequence Thereof Got Rich and Built Himself a House. With a Collection of Riddles Written by Him. The Whole Adorned with a Variety of Cuts by Master Collett. London: Printed and sold by John Marshall, at No. 4, Aldermary Church-Yard in Bow-Lane; and no. 17, Queen-Street, Cheapside, [between 1787 and 1798]. Purchased on the Elisabeth Ball Fund, 2011.
Bibliographers have been able to identify at least eighteen eighteenth-century editions of this classic nursery rhyme, most of them surviving in only one or two known copies. The Morgan has the earliest securely datable illustrated edition (1770) as well as many later editions. As yet unrecorded, this edition contains the backstory of the nursery rhyme, an account of young Jack’s rise to riches, along with a collection of riddles composed by Jack “for the amusement of his playmates.”