Description

[003533] [Various]. Old ‘Miscellany’ Days – A Selection of Stories from Bentley’s Miscellany. ill. Cruikshank, George. London: Richard Bentley, 1885. First Thus. 4to. Full Morocco. Good+. [9], x-xi, [6], 2-350pp, [2], slightly later, full straight grain morocco, raised bands, spine in six panels, title lettered direct to second panel, with illustrator to third, each with volute corner pieces, remaining panels with central floral spray, volute and flower head corner pieces and small roundels and stars, date to foot, all in gilt, covers with gilt triple border, double line gilt roll to edges, inner edges with varying gilt rolls, a.e.g., plain endpapers.

Outer joints slightly chipped with small amounts of surface loss, joints still holding well, slightly rubbed to extremities. Half-title nearly detached and now sitting slightly proud, otherwise internally quite bright and clean.

With the thirty-three Cruikshank steel engravings called for, but also with what an old pencil note calls “a set of Cruikshanks’s original impressions” bound in opposite each book illustration. These are presumably originals from Bentley’s Miscellany, where these stories and illustrations first appeared, being published between 1837 and 1843, when both Dickens and Ainsworth were its editors (see Cohn 69). With the bookplates of Franz James Mankiewicz to front pastedown and Harold A. Wernher of Luton Hoo to front endpaper.

Binding is by Wallis (possibly Robert Wallis, see Packer, page 156).

Not in Cohn, but see Cohn 69