ABSTRACT
John Philips’s Cyder: A Poem in Two Books (1708) teaches the reader in great detail not only how to produce superior cider but also how to enjoy this ‘homebrew’ in an atmosphere of rural conviviality. His two-part georgic, 1,465 lines long, ranges from a description of the rural year’s cycle to digressions about British history. Cyder, published one year a er the Act of Union (1707), is more than a recipe in rhyme about a fermented drink made from apples: it constitutes a symbolic celebration of a united England and Scotland – thus drinking cider, and writing about it, become national statements.2
