Search

An excellent French herbier, the typical means of record for amateur naturalists in France, who seem to have preferred the specimen itself over a painted or drawn representation. Each plant is captioned with name, location and (sometimes) year of collection.

A commemorative volume (‘Not for Publication’) issued to accompany the Nepalese Prime Minister’s visit to HMS Dreadnought on exercise in the English Channel. The superb photographs depict: the Dreadnought, a submarine (4 plates), a torpedo boat destroyer (2 plates). The Nepalese deputation witnessed a demonstration of firing and of the deflection of torpedoes with safety nets. Launched in 1906, Dreadnought was a revolutionary battleship which stimulated the Anglo-German arms race and gave its name to an entire class of heavily armoured craft. It was widely publicised as part of British naval propaganda and shown-off to numerous foreign visitors. The Nepalese Prime Minister was the Maharaja Sri Teen Chandra Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana (1863–1929), one of three nephews who had ordered the assassination of their uncle Maharaja Ranodip Singh Kunwar in the Nepali coup of 1885. Worldcat lists the Texas A&M copy only, and there is another in the Imperial War Museum.

A handsome Romantic reinterpretation of Vignola’s classic Renaissance manual of perspective, Due regole della prospettiva pratica (1582, with many later editions). Elements of Vignola’s diagrams are adapted for the oblong format of the book and often updated with figures and buildings in contemporary style. Bossi, about who we have been able to discover almost nothing beyond this manuscript, also adds a fine sequence of 4 coloured illustrations depicting furniture designs in the French Empire style by Percier and 17 superb monochrome views and interiors, 13 of which are in a sequence with their own decorative title-page ‘Aggiunta di alcune prospettive ricavae da classici autori.’�

First edition, rare, of this collection of children’s songs. Ludovica Brentano, later baroness Desbordes (1787-1854), affectionately known as Lulu, was grand daughter of Sophie von La Roche (the first widely known German female novelist) and she became patron of the Grimm brothers; contributing two tales to their Kinder- und Hausmärchen. Worldcat: NYPL and Harvard in US, BL in UK.

First edition of a profusely illustrated Jesuit life of Christ, whose plates were engraved from the numerous devotional pictures by Flemish masters collected by the Jesuit father Jérome Natalis.

First edition in French of Blasche’s Der Papparbeiter, oder, Anleitung in Pappe zu arbeite (1811). The 8 large folding plates depict a large array of miniature folded paper pieces: geometrical shapes, furniture and buildings. One of them is devoted to garden furniture in the oriental style, including a Chinese bridge.

George Woodward, affectionately dubbed ‘Mustard George’ by his contemporaries, was one of the pioneers of English caricature. Like his drinking-partner Thomas Rowlandson, Woodward absorbed high and low culture omnivorously and paid keen attention to contemporary politics.

A Political Fair is ‘a fantastic survey of the international situation’ in 1807 and is considered one of Woodward’s finest images, the print catalogue of the British Museum devoting two full pages to its complex allegories. At the heart of the fair is a large booth (‘The Best-Booth in the Fair’) representing Great Britain holding aloft on its platform images of Britannia, John Bull, together with an Irishman, Scotsman and Welsh harpist gathered convivially around a punchbowl, while a waiter sweeps into the chamber below with a vast joint of roast beef on his platter. All this was typical of Woodward’s patriotism and was intended to portray the essential unity of the nation amidst the host of clamouring figures in the neighbouring booths representing the other nations. Napoleon, in tricorn and feathers, rebuffs a disgruntled Dutchman complaining about his King with the words ‘I never change Mynheer after the goods are taken out of the Shop’. High up on the right, the American booth displays a placard advertising ‘Much ado about Nothing with the Deserter’, a reference to the friction between Britain and the United States over recent defections from British to American ships and the ban on armed British ships in American ports. The Danish booth on the left advertises ‘The English Fleet and The Devil to Pay’ in reference to the hideous bombardment of Copenhagen by the British fleet in September that year.

Musical and theatrical references abound, with many of the placards punning on the titles of plays and musical performances then showing in London: Much ado about Nothing, All’s well that ends well (Shakespeare), The Padlock (Bickerstaffe), The Deserter (Dibdin), The Double Dealer (on the Russian booth, by Congreve) and The English Fleet (Dibdin again). BM Satires, 10763

Number 10 of 250 copies. Shakespeare’s metaphysical poem on the theme of idealised and mystical love was first published in the Supplement to Robert Chester’s Love’s Martyr (1601). In it, the phoenix and the turtle dove are joined in eternal love and burn themselves alive.

A leading figure in the Nouvelle École de Paris, Léon Gischia continued to produce and exhibit avant-garde work throughout the German occupation, despite repeated denunciation for degeneracy. He also produced designs for the theatre, notably for the production in French of Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral at the théâtre du Vieux Colombier in 1945. Bland, History of Book Illustration, 321.

An almanac for the year 1820. Engraved throughout with text and images. A delightful miniature almanac, which is preceded by several popular songs (‘Aux Dames’, ‘le Portraits’, ‘le Banquet’, ‘la Barque à Caron’ etc.) Though without imprint, this is characteristic of the popular miniature books produced by Marcilly. Not in Worldcat (which locates only an 1821 issue, described as in ‘128mo’). It is probable that it was issued in these two years only. Grand-Carteret 1908 (citing a copy in the collection of Georges Salomons).

A collection of finely-executed plates illustrating the vogue for neo-Classical dress, with figures and groups placed within appropriate drawing-room and dinner-table settings. Moses was a sought-after engraver who worked for James Barrie, William Opie and Benjamin West, among others. His lightly-draped figures rendered with a sparse line have clear echoes of Flaxman. The collection was also issued under the imprint of at least two other London publishers (M’Lean and Miller).

Compiled in the town of Popovo in the wine-growing region of North Eastern Bulgaria, this souvenir album was compiled by a federation of three local temperance societies and given to one ‘Monsieur Dr. P. Legrain’. Most of the photographic postcards depict society outings, with large groups of men, women and children usually in outdoor settings in all seasons (including what appear to be very harsh winters). Several of the photographs were taken at harvest time, with copious bunches of grapes in evidence. The context of the presentation is not immediately obvious, though may be apparent in the three long inscriptions in Bulgarian accompanied by the purple inkstamps of each of the societies.

An attractive juvenile broadside, illustrating players of 16 different instruments, including guitar, flute harp, keyboard, trumpet, hurdy-gurdy and percussion.

A delightful edition in ‘petit format’ by Valade, who pioneered the format before it was made ubiquitous by his successor Cazin. The Londres and Liège imprints, of course, are false (Le petit format, Paris, 1878). The Contes moraux had first appeared individually in the Mercure, with a collected edition of 1761. The plates in our Valade edition are well-executed reductions of the Gravelot plates found in the first illustrated edition of 1763. Gay I, 709-10.

A comic picaresque novel and an anti-Jesuit satire recounting the life and adventures of Rozelli in a series of fanciful catastrophes and disasters, in the course of which he becomes a Catholic clergyman and then converts to Judaism. The title was first published in 1708 and went on to be republished a number of times during the eighteenth century, with translations into English, German and Dutch. The illustrations appeared first in an edition of 1729.