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A rare large-format toy theatre print with figures for cutting out and mounting from a performance at Astley’s Amphitheatre, which was then managed by Andrew Ducrow, the father of circus equestrianism. The plate is unsigned other than by the publisher William West and is unattributed in the British Museum print catalogue, but it is of high quality. The BM copy was acquired with the nineteenth-century collection of toy theatre prints assembled by Ralph Thomas, who had made a tentative attribution to William Blake in Notes and Queries in 1898 (June 4th, p. 455). The British Museum did not adopt the attribution, though there is certainly something of Blake’s style in the print. William West was the pioneer of the Regency toy theatre print, commissioning work from both Cruickshank brothers, Flaxman, Dighton and Brooke.

First editions of the complete sale catalogues of Denon’s celebrated collections, a marked-up set from the collection of Frédéric Villot (1809-1875), Louvre conservateur of pictures and an important collector in his own right.
Besides his erotic novella, Point de Lendemain, Denon (diplomat, artist and director of the Musée Napoleon at the Louvre) is primarily remembered for his role in Napoleon’s expeditions of 1798-9 and as author of Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Égypte (1802). Among the most influential and important French collectors, he acquired obsessively but with discrimination, both for Napoleon and himself. His posthumous sales of 1826-7 included over 3000 lots of antiquities, pictures and prints, with eight important Egyptian papyri included in the first sale and his own drawings from the Egypt exhibition in another. The three volumes are very scarce complete and comprise: I. Monuments antiques, historiques, modernes; ouvrages orientale, etc. (ed. L.J.J. Dubois, 1390 lots); II. Tableaux dessins et miniatures (ed. A.N. Perignon, 977 lots); III. Estampes et ouvrages a figures (ed. Duchesne Aîné, 801 lots).

Architect John Nash is impaled on the spire of his new All Souls church in Langham Place, Marylebone, completed in 1823 as part of his grand plans for the costly ‘improved’ swathe of London stretching from the lower end of Regent’s Street to Regent’s Park. With its rotunda and idiosyncratic steeple thhe landmark church was not universally admired. This plate is subtitled: ‘Dedicated without Permission, to the Church Commissioners. Providence sends Meat, The Devil sends Cooks, Parliament sends Funds, But, who sends the Architects?!!!’
Dorothy George describes it thus: ‘An illustration of the debate of 30 Mar. when H. G. Bennett demanded the name of the architect of the church being built in Langham Place. ‘He should also like to hear what this mass of deformity had cost’, and professed himself ready to subscribe towards the cost of demolition. Under pressure, Arbuthnot admitted that the architect was Nash.... [who] is reputed to have commented to his assistants on this print: ‘See, gentlemen, how criticism has exalted me.’ The Times, 10 April, derided the spire as adapted to spike cranes in a war of the future with pigmies, envisaged by the architect’. BM Satires X, 1952.

First (and presumably only) edition of a rare and delightful large format illustrated children’s book depicting boys and girls enjoying country life, including gardening and open air reading. The text is quadrilingual: German, French, Italian and Czech. This exceptionally well preserved copy bears a contemporary prize label, recording it as a prize to one Anna Kalser at the Pilsner Kreishhaupt-Schule (Bohemia). Very rare: no copy found in Worldcat. KVK records a single copy (Austrian National Library) of a variant issue (also undated) in 8vo format (paginated pp. 33, not 15 as in our oblong 4to, with the plates folded uncoloured).

Sole edition, very rare, and a remarkable survival, of this pioneering and original children’s panorama. The eight joined plates present a single sequential narrative — cleverly seen from different vantage points — of a morning ride across several miles of rolling English countryside some thirty miles from London (as the milestone in the first image indicates). The two young riders (Edward and Walter) leave their large county house, pass through lanes with green fields on either side, an imaginary village with church, inn and shops, passing windmills, a watermill, bridges and (in the last 2 images) the newly-built railway with steam-trains. A good-natured and simple story, the panorama and accompanying text presents a telling microcosm of genteel English Victorian society, the participants all acting in their proper place in an ordered society. The gamekeeper’s daughter opens a gate for the boys, a family acquaintance of rank rides by in her carriage, a wagonner supplying the village shops is given a tip for ale, the father rides to hounds, while a ‘loutish’ farm boy mentioned in the text is silently omitted in the panorama. The text, printed in regular letterpress was evidently intended to be read by an adult to a child.
The use and presentation of the panorama for narrative is striking, quite unlike most contemporary British panoramas or children’s books of this date or earlier. The title page indicates that it was to form part of a series: ‘Stories told in Pictures’ of which the advert leaf mentions two further titles ‘nearly ready’: A Noon-Day Ramble and An Evening Walk. Neither appears to have survived, or perhaps were never published. A Morning Ride is exceptionally rare, with only the Opie Collection (Bodleian Library) and Rhode Island School of Design copies located. Opie EE 190. Described in detail in Hannah Field in an essay in the 2015 collection Space and Place in Children’s Literature, 1789 to the Present entitled ‘The Story unfolds: intertwined Space and Time in the Victorian Children’s Panorama’

Sole edition of this rare suite of ten hand-coloured lithographs commemorating a ball inspired by Ivanhoe, held in Brussels on 5 February 1823 by the Prince and Princess of Orange in honour of the British community in that city. The ball was an early expression of ‘Scottomania’, and of the revival of interest in medieval pageantry, that occupied European high society following the publication of Ivanhoe in 1819. There were thirty-two guests at the ball, all attending in elaborate costume and dancing a special quadrille which became the talk of the town and remained ‘the principal topic of conversation at Brussels’ several months later (according to the The Repository of Arts, May 1823). The additional printed programme (not necessarily issued with the plates) tells us that Lord Danlo was Ivanhoe, while the Black Knight was played by Mr de Janti, and Mrs Berkley taking the role of Rowena. Further down the list is Mrs Fielden (sic), as Alicia, wife of the Joseph Ffeilden who owned this copy – she can be seen on the left in Plate VII. Jowers, Theatrical Costume 3126. COPAC shows copies at NLS, Edinburgh, and V&A. Worldcat adds Paris-INHA only.

In 1827 members of the Osages Tribe from the Ohio River Valley in Arkansas and Missouri, travelled to Paris with Louisiana resident David DeLaunay. They were initially lionised by Paris society before being abandoned by their host and forced to fend for themselves. This celebrated lithograph shows Kihegashugah or Little Chief (age 28), Minckchatahooh or Little Soldier (age 22), and Grétomih (age 18 and cousin to Kihegashugah’s wife). It was issued as part of Delpech and Boilly’s Grimaces series (with three plates depicting the Osages) but was also issued separately, as here, without the captions found in the Grimaces version.

A rare French jigsaw set in three parts — a wonderful and complete alphabet illustrated with trades and crafts (male and female) including the: an armourer, laundrywoman, gilder, epicier, florist, glovemaker, herbalist, printer, gardener, ‘kiosque’ vendor, milkwoman, blacksmith, fancy goods seller (’nouveautés’), goldsmith, pavier, ironmonger, restaurateur, sculptor, dyer, factoryworker, tailor, wood engraver (’xylographes’ —a good solution for the letter ‘X’) and zincworker.

The very rare catalogue for the first exhibition of industrial products, held in Paris in 1798, the forerunner of the great universal exhibitions of the following centuries.
Organised by the Minister of the Interior, François de Neufchâteau, with a view to ‘offering a panorama of products from the different branches of industry in order to encourage emulation’ this was the first great exhibition held in France. Its origins went back to the previous year and the initiative of the Marquis d’Aveze, who visited the factories of Sèvres, Gobelins and Savonnerie and was appalled both at the starving condition of the workers and at the superabundance of exquisite luxury goods with insufficient commercial outlet. With Neufchâteau, he arranged for an exhibition to be held at the Chateau de St Cloud but on the very day selected for the opening (18th Fructidor 1797) the Directory sent out its decree for the expulsion of the nobility — the Chateau de St Cloud was occupied by a company of dragoons and the Marquis expelled. The exhibition eventually took place the following year at the Chateau d’Orsay and on the Champ-de-Mars (on the spot where the spoils of the Italian campaign had been exhibited six weeks previously) and in a series of sixty arcades designed by David in fashionable Grecian style. Sixteen departments and 110 exhibitors were represented and as a note at the beginning of the catalogue explains, the number would have been even greater but for the speed with which the exhibition was organised, which made it impossible to get word to more distant departments of the country in time. It was a great success and the decision was taken to hold it annually.
The pamphlet sets out the list of exhibitors and is followed by the statement of the Jury given on the 5th Vendemiare, a list of the twelve firms singled out for particular distinction by the jury, and a further list of another twelve firms meriting an ‘honourable mention’. The jury consisted of Vien, Gallois, Darcet, Chaptal, Mollard, Moitte, Gilet-Laumont, Duquesnoy, Ferd and Berthoud. It sets out its criteria clearly: the key merit of any work is the invention and its principle appeal in public terms is its utility. In the context of ongoing hostility with Britain, it is interesting to see that the jury confesses a preference for those products which rival or outshine their British counterparts. A couple of firms which did not choose to exhibit are nonetheless singled out for mention in the address: Boyer Fonfrede, a textile merchant, Didot jeune, the publisher, and Delaître, a cotton weaver. The prize winners included firms of international repute, such as Breguet, the clock maker, Lenoir, inventor and maker of mathematical instruments, and Conté, an engineer who first applied machine-ruling to engraving. Having made known its decision to hold the exhibition on an annual basis in future, the address concludes with resounding praise for the new face of France, delivered by the Revolution from subservience to its neighbours and slavery to ‘routine’, the enemy of all true art. Rare: no printed copy listed in the holdings of the Bibliothèque nationale (which has a manuscript transcription) and only 3 copies known in libraries in France. Worldcat lists copies at Yale, Northwestern, Oregon and the British Library. Sandoz and Guiffrey, Arts appliqués et industries d’art aux expositions, 1912, pp. 1-5; Douyere-Demeulenaere, Expositions publiques des produits de l’industrie francaise, Répertoire méthodique, 2008.

A good and typical illustrated commonplace album with transcribed verses, drawings and watercolours. The selections are very much representative of the contemporary fashion among women for such manuscript collections, with poems by Byron, Goldsmith and others, verses of friendship, loss and leave-taking, nature poems, riddles and aphorisms. A nicely self-aware inclusion here is Benjamin Franklin’s humorous ‘Paper a Poem’ relating paper types (gilt paper, copy paper, brown paper, foolscap, touch paper, waste paper and so on) to human analogues. The relatively few poems by women include Ann Radcliffe’s ‘To the Nightingale’ and ‘To Anne’ (unattributed here but by Mary Anne Browne, 1812-1845, entitled by her ‘Written in an Album’). Most of the contents have been entered within a few years of 1828 followed by a scatter of much later entries of the 1870s and 80s towards the end.

The best account of the album genre in the history of reading and writing we have come across is by the late William St Clair in The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (2004, pp. 224-9) in a passage which could aptly serve as a description of Ann Jordan’s album.

‘Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit / Death how certain Death how sur[e] / Sin the wound. And Christ the cure’. ‘Emma. Preest. Her work / Tuts Hill House / July. 20. 1847 Aged /12. Years. Old’.

Emma Preest is possibly the Emma born on the 8th June 1835 at Bream Eaves, Gloucestershire and baptised in the Wesleyan chapel at Monmouth — certainly that would accord with her given age (12) in 1847 when she made this sampler. The identity of Tuts Hill house is not straightforward, there having been two houses so named in the vicinity of Tidenham, Chepstow. We can find no pictorial evidence of either of them as a three-storey, four bay house as in Emma’s depiction, and no Preest family associated with either. But if one accepts the likelihood of Emma being Gloucestershire born, both houses would have been some ten miles from her birthplace, suggesting the possibility she entered service at one of them at the age of 12 (quite possible) and that this may have been an ‘apprentice’ piece. Young girls were taught this kind of sewing not so much as a primer in reading (still less writing) as in household needleork and linen labelling.

The verse is a variation of a popular gravestone epitaph: ‘Life is uncertain, death is sure, Sin the wound, and Christ the cure. If we have correctly identified Emma Preest, she married in 1854, had several children and emigrated with her family after 1870 and died in 1915 at Shawnee, Perry County, Ohio, USA, aged 80.

Number 2 of 15 copies.

Number 2 of 15 copies with the additional suite on chine.

Number 2 of 11 copies.

First edition in French of any part of Eden’s The State of the Poor. Or, an History of the Labouring Classes in England (1797) one of the classic works in the history of economics and the foundation of the discipline of sociology. This extensive but partial translation formed numbers 21 and 24 of the rare Recueil de Mémoires sur les établissemens d’humanité, continuously paginated across the two volumes. The editors’ preface notes the timeliness of such a translation at a time of revolutionary upheaval when no system of social security for the poor existed in France. Issued anonymously the translation is attributed to A.-C. Duquesnoy by Rochedieu. It precedes the edition translated by La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt of 1800 and is very rare. Rochedieu, Bibliography of Translations of English Works 1700-1800, 95. Cf. Printing and the Mind of Man, 249 (the English edition). Besides the British library copy (incomplete, apparently the first volume only), Worldcat locates no other copies outside continental Europe.

Alphabet (upper and lower case), several decorative lines and two verses: ‘Is there ambition in my heart / search gracious God and see...’ [Isaac Watts] and ‘Teach me to live / that I may dread/ the grave as little / as my bed // Teach me to die ‘ that so I may / with joy behold /the judgement day’ [Thomas Ken, and later sued by Thomas Hardy in Jude the Obscure]. Needlework samplers remain one of the most widespread manifestations of the teaching and learning of basic literacy among girls and young women and, as here, reflect a strongly moralistic background.

Greenaway’s ‘Procession’ greetings card set consisted of just two cards, but with each produced with variant verses.

This set includes all four variants of each.

Card 1 (Blue border):
(a) ‘A garland fair for Christmas day...’
(b) ‘My Valentine in every rose discern...’
(c) ‘Well we love our roses sweet...’
(d) ‘Thro the Year that dawns...’

Card 2 (Pink border):
(a) ‘A garland fair for Christmas day...’
(b) ‘Let’s love and live together, dear...’
(c) ‘Well we love our roses sweet...’
(d) ‘Thro the Year that dawns...’ Schuster & Engen, Kate Greenaway, 284.

The three greetings cards comprising the larger version of Greenaway’s Party Girl set, each present here in several variants, listed below according to Schuster & Engen 282.

Card 1 Girl with Badminton set
a) recto ‘Christmas’ verso ‘I wish you all the joy that you can wish’.
b) recto ‘Christmas’ verso ‘May the day be as happy as you could wish’.
c) recto ‘New Year’ verso ‘Thy own wish, wish I thee in every place!’.
d) recto ‘Valentine’ verso ‘To bear my love to you to-day’.
e) recto ‘Greeting’ verso ‘Thy own wish, wish I thee in every place’.

Card 2 Girl in rust coat and beaver hat
b) recto ‘Christmas’ verso ‘Wishing you every happiness and blessing’.
d) recto ‘New Year’ verso ‘May the day be as happy as you could wish’.
d variant) recto ‘New Year’ verso ‘Wishing you every happiness and blessing’.
e) recto ‘Valentine’ verso ‘From one who loves you dearly’.
g) recto ‘Greeting’ verso ‘Thy own wish, wish I thee in every place’.
h) recto ‘Greeting’ verso ‘May the day be as happy as you could wish’.

Card 3 Girl in green dress
a) recto ‘Christmas’ verso ‘Thy own wish, wish I thee in every place’.
b) recto ‘Christmas’ verso ‘Wishing you every happiness and blessing’.
c variant) recto ‘New Year’ verso ‘I wish you all the joy that you can wish’.
d) recto ‘Valentine’ verso ‘I bring you some flowers from your Valentine’.
e) recto ‘Greeting’ verso ‘Wishing you every happiness and blessing’.
f) recto ‘Greeting’ verso ‘May the day be as happy as you could wish’. Schuster & Engen, Kate Greenaway, 282.

One of two versions of this early set, this one apparently issued as Christmas cards. Schuster & Engen, Kate Greenaway, 291.

First edition, one of 250 copies (of a total edition of 280). Thomas Willement was one of the pioneers of the nineteenth-century gothic revival. He worked alongside his better-known contemporary Pugin on several projects, but never very happily: Pugin later (unfairly) accused Willement of being only interested in money. Willement is perhaps best known for his stained glass in the medieval style (St George’s Chapel, Windsor, Hampton Court, Barbados cathedral). Davington priory (acquired by him in 1845) was an exercise in the complete medieval revival of a much altered priory house and church, involving polychromatic painted decoration, stained glass, and designs for encaustic tiles, together with purchases of furniture and fittings. Much of the work described in the Historical Sketch remains intact. 250 copies of this descriptive publication were printed on ‘foolscap quarto’ paper, with a further 30 copies on tinted ‘crown quarto’.