The Benny Hill (Or Soupy Sales) of 19th C. British Caricaturists

by Stephen J. Gertz

A Cutlass. (Cut-Lass).

In 1828, a tasty if somewhat groan-inducing gallimaufry of visual wordplay, corniness, and puns in aquatint caricature, Joe Lisle's Play Upon Words, was published by Thomas McLean, the renowned publisher of satirical prints. Very little is known about it. At its time of issue it may have been very popular; word-play, particularly punning, has a long tradition within English folk culture. Though often considered low humor it was a pleasure, innocent or guilty,  across social class. Fun with language is global; even Inuits enjoy its wit.

Taking a Galloway. (Girl away).

A Grenadier. (Granny-dear).

Little is known about Joseph Lisle (fl. 1828-1835), who, based upon a small collection of individual caricatures found in the British Museum, was a satirical designer and lithographer who specialized in visual wordplay and social satire. In addition to Thomas McLean, his work was published by George Hunt, Berthoud & Son, S. Gans, S.W. Fores, Frederick William Collard, Z.T. Purday, S. Maunders, Paine & Hopkins, and Gabriel Shire Tregear. He received notice in Figaro In London (1834, Vols 3-4, p. 139), the forerunner of Punch, for "a clever caricature" regarding the national debt.

In 1828, the same year that he published his Play Upon Words, Joe Lisle created an aquatint for a series, British Classics. The Spectator, published by Berthoud & Son and captioned Very Fond of Prints & a Drawing Master. Within, "A man in quasi-fashionable dress with spurred top-boots and knee-breeches gapes oafishly at a print-shop window, while a little boy, respectably dressed, takes a purse from his breeches-pocket, having already twitched a handkerchief from the coat-tail pocket which hangs inside out" (M. Dorothy George, Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum).

Unlike the aquatints in Play Upon Words, he signed it at lower left ("J. Lisle"). Very Fond of Prints and a Drawing Master shamelessly promotes Joe Lisle's Play Upon Words by featuring it in a double-spread in the center display window at far left.

 The "Drawing Master" of the caption is likely  self-referential. Circa 1830, he drew, etched and  stipple-engraved, and published A Designing Character, with what may be the only image of Lisle we have, a poverty-stricken starving artist.

M. Dorothy George, in the British Museum's Catalogue of British Political And Personal Satires (no. 16413), describes it as "seemingly a self-portrait, a youngish artist in a garret lit by a skylight. He sits in a massive arm-chair under a low slanting roof (right), leaning his head on his right hand, palette and brushes in the left hand. He is neatly dressed and looks with fixed but amiable melancholy through spectacles at the spectator. Easel and canvas are on the left. At his feet is an open portfolio; a tea-pot and bottle are on a rickety stool and on the floor is a frying-pan filled with small coals (sign of great poverty cf. BM Satires No. 14993). A bust on a bracket under the roof is the sole decoration."

A Pioneer. (A pie-on-here).

Here, then, is a collection by a journeyman satirical caricaturist who, if not a peer of his contemporaries Cruikshank, Seymour, Heath, Alken, and Woodward, left a notable mark, however small, in the field.

As to why so little is known and so little produced by Lisle, one can only speculate that he, clearly no stranger to melancholy, was, as so many journeyman artists and writers of his time, perhaps a little too familiar with the play upon livers by ardent spirits.

Misadvised. (Miss-advised).

Whatever the reason for his obscurity he fell through the cracks and Joe Lisle's  Play Upon Words escaped the notice of caricature and color-plate book bibliographers; it is an orphan not found in Abbey, Prideaux, or Tooley. Perhaps it wasn't popular, few copies were printed and fewer survived. Perhaps Lisle's humor was too obvious, the Benny Hill of British caricature, less clever than broad, relying on easy gags rather than sharp social observation, low-brow music hall comedy rather than sly wit. When you have to explain the puns in wink-wink nudge-nudge, Get it?  parenthetical asides you're in trouble.

Americans who were weaned on a certain classic children's show of the '50s through early 1960s will recognize Lisle as a forerunner to comedian Milton Supman (1926-2009), who, performing on U.S. television as Soupy Sales, captured the goofy, simple pleasures of sophomoric humor.

Muggy Weather

I know why there's a beer keg standing by
Muggy weather
Just can't get my poorself together
Without a pint or three.
(Apologies to Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler).

Joe Lisle's Play Upon Words is now an extremely rare volume: ABPC notes only one copy at auction since 1970 and OCLC/KVK record only four copies in institutional holdings worldwide.
__________

[LISLE, Joseph]. Joe Lisle's Play Upon Words. London: Thomas McLean, 1828. Small oblong quarto (6 1/2 x 10 in; 166 x 253 mm). Forty hand-colored aquatint plates, watermarked 1825, with interleaves.

The Plates:
1.    An Action off Spit-Head
2.    Muggy Weather
3.    A Cutlass. (Cut-Lass)
4.    A Chaste Character. (Chased)
5.    An Ad-mired Character
6.    Lath
7.    Plaister
8.    A Coal Meter. (A Coal meet-Her)
9.    A Rain Bow. (Beau)
10.  An Officious Character. (O-Fish's)
11.  A Jewel. (A Jew-Ill.)
12.  A Sub-Lime Character
13.  A Stage Manager
14.  A Stable Character
15.  My Hog & I. (Mahogany)
16.  Elegant Extracts
17.  A very amusing Company. (Ham-using)
18.  Sootable (Suitable) Characters
19.  A Charger
20.  A Sophist-Ical Argument
21.  Taking a Galloway. (Girl Away)
22.  A Diving Belle
23.  The Dread-Nought taking A Smack
24.  Moore's (Blackamoors.) Loves of the Angels
25.  A Grenadier. (Granny-dear)
26.  A Pioneer. (A Pie-on-here)
27.  Misadvised. (Miss-advised)
28.  A Dutch Place. (Plaice)
29.  May we meet more numerous & never less respectable
30.  Metaphysics. (Met-he-Physics?)
31.  Coming off with a claw (éclat)
32.  A Common Sewer. (Sower)
33.  Empailed. (Him pailed)
34.  Mutual Civility
35.  An Armless (Harmless) Character
36.  Canon Law. (Cannon)
37.  (History) His-story
38.  The Infant in Arms
39.  A Man Milling her. (Milliner)
40.  Mistaken. (Miss-taken)

__________

Images from Joe Lisle's Play Upon Words courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.

Images of Very Fond of Prints and a Drawing Master and A Designing Master courtesy of the British Museum, with our thanks.
__________
__________

If Classic Rock Albums Were Books

by Stephen J. Gertz

"Fast-paced 1958 thriller: a jilted train driver hijacks
his New York subway train to exact revenge upon his love
rival, only to threaten the life of his ex-lover.
The last 30 pages are missing. Don’t know if she survives."

Last year, Christophe Gowans, a British graphic designer who has worked as art director at Blitz, Hybrid, Esquire, Modern Painters, The Sunday Telegraph Magazine, and Stella, created The Record Books, a series of faux volumes based upon great, best-selling record albums. Booktryst is pleased to present a sampler. The blurbs are his own.

"Thorough and clear children’s reference book concerning
all things equine. Sadly, many of the illustrations
within have been disfigured with juvenile amendments
and additions, in biro."

"Gruesome schlock from the prolific Jackson. In this
relentless stalkerfest, private eye Dwight Blackman
takes on the ‘Shamone’ Killer for the 3rd time.
Will the psycho slip through the dick’s fingers yet again?
Yes."

"When a form of acid rain, caused by a comet plowing
into Uranus, appears to stunt the growth of every
living thing on Earth, mankind’s very existence is
on a knife edge. When a group of pygmies realize
that the peach is the only plant unaffected, they
found a new society, with the peach stone as its currency."

"Charismatic Harvard whizkid Hendrix’s self-help bible.
A spin-off from his phenomenally successful TV reality show,
’The Experience.’"

"A rags to glory autobiography by Bruce Reginald Grayson
Springsteen. The story of his rise from squalor to victory
in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics is…
well, it’s a pretty dull book."

"War comic. Part of a very long series, an epic really,
recounting the journey of three boys from early
conscription to their various fates. Heroic, tragic,
moving. This one is covered in puerile sexual additions
in blue biro, though."

__________

All images courtesy of Christopher Gowans, with our thanks.

Images are available as prints and postcards here.
__________
__________

Don't Wipe Your Nose With This Map

by Stephen J. Gertz

Evelyn Mulwray: It's a handkerchief!
[slap]
Jake Gertz: I said I want the truth!
Evelyn Mulwray: It's a map…
[slap]
Evelyn Mulwray: It's a handkerchief…
[slap]
Evelyn Mulwray: A handkerchief, a map.
[More slaps]
Jake Gertz: I said I want the truth!
Evelyn Mulwray: It's a handkerchief AND a map!

The Travelling Handkerchief  has come to town, Fairburn's Map of the Country Twelve Miles Round London by E. Bourne, printed on calico, 590 x 540 mm, in 1831, a scarce, early handkerchief map.

The map is circular, and reaches Teddington in the south west, clockside to Norwood, Harrow on the Hill, Chipping Barnet, Dagenham, Purley and Kingsston, wherever they are. I'm in Los Angeles, clockside to Westwood, harrowing on Barrington, Pico and Sepulveda; what do I know? This cartographical Kleenex™ is decorated by vignette views of Chelsea and Greenwich Hospitals in the bottom corners, and a banner heralding the title is held aloft in an eagle's beak.

Washington D.C. based on
Samuel Hill's engraving of Andrew Ellicott's plan.
Printed in Boston, c. 1792.

Handkerchief maps date back to the late 18th century. Examples featuring the plan for Washington D.C. werre sold as "'an authentic plan of the Metropolis of the United States,' advertised as an accurate guide for the prospective purchaser of lots but also as 'a very handsome ornament for the parlor or counting room" (Luria, Capital Speculations: Writing and Building Washington, p. 14). These handkerchief maps are believed to have been printed in Boston in 1792 in connection with "the sale of lots in the new 'Federal Town'" (Works Progress Administration, Washington: City and Capital, p. xiv).

Map of the Baltic theatre of the Crimean War
Paris, Dopter, c.1855.
Engraved map, printed on silk. 650 x 610mm.
Map of the Baltic Sea during
the Crimean War, when the British and French
sent their fleets to blockade St Petersburg.
It is decorated with vignettes of St Petersberg,
Kronstadt, naval scenes and French and British coat-of-arms.

During the 19th century, the British Army's Quartermaster-General Department in India issued handkerchief maps of Delhi and Attock for use by their troops, and they were published as souvenirs during the Crimean War.

The Absent-Minded Beggar.
London, the Daily Mail Publishing Co. Ltd, c.1899.
Linen handkerchief printed in blue, 460 x 470mm.
Printed handkerchief published by the Daily Mail
to rise funds for the "Soldiers' Families Fund"
after the outbreak of the Second Boer War (1899-1902).

Guildhall Library in London has an example of The Travelling Handkerchief in its collection and of another handkerchief map scarcity, An Illustrated Map of London, published in 1850.

Anonymous.
London and its Environs for 1832.
Engraving on cotton. 915 x 890mm.

Handkerchief maps were issued to U.S. Air Force servicemen during WWII as escape maps if shot down over enemy territory. On acetate rayon, linen, or silk, they were lightweight, waterproof, hard to tear and tough to disintegrate; they were able to take a beating yet still fulfill their purpose. The British also issued handkerchief maps to their air force crews and ground troops in all theaters of operation.

The Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection at University of Wisconsin has sixteen mid-20th century handkerchief maps of U.S. states, Canada, the 1939 World's Fair, etc. in its collection.

Surviving eighteenth and nineteenth century handkerchief maps in collectible condition are quite rare.

Jake Gertz: My nose is bleeding, gimme your handkerchief.
Walsh: Forget it, Jake, I'm lookin' for Chinatown. It's on here somewhere.
__________

BOURNE, E. The Travelling Handkerchief. Fairburn's Map of the Country Twelve Miles Round London. London: John Fairburn, 1831. Engraved map printed on calico. 590 x 540mm.

Howgego 216 (3).
__________

The Travelling Handkerchief and other British handkerchief map images courtesy of Altea Gallery, with our thanks.

Image of Washington D.C. handkerchief map courtesy of George Washington University GW Magazine, with our thanks.

__________
__________

Meet Paul Parrot, Rare Bird Casanova & Star Of Rare Book

by Albert

Today's guest blogger is, once more, Albert the Writing Parrot, a thirty-four year old Yellow-Naped Amazon, Booktryt's mascot, my ward since his five-months old birthday, and, pathetically, my most successful long-term relationship. He knows more about these books than I do. If his writing voice sounds similar to mine do not be surprised. He is, after all, a parrot  - SJG.

Title-page.

Me again, pressed into service with the promise of a filbert thrown my way. I'm a conditioned fool.

Tittums Deserting Fido.

As the go-to bird on parrot books I'm often asked, What's the best volume on Mr. Paul Parrot, the notoriously horny hook-bill, fine-feathered lothario, and wandering roué with wings?

Step into my cage, sit at my zygodactyl feet, lend me an ear (I need a nosh), and I shall tell you, strictly entre-nous, a scandalous tale exceeded only, perhaps, by that of Aly Khan, the "fabulously wealthy, hard riding, fast driving, restless man of the world with a liking for parties and beautiful women" (NY Times, Feb. 7, 1958) for whom hi-fidelity was strictly for sound recordings; faithfulness to wives and lovers cramped his style.

There was Hon. Joan Guinness, Pamela Churchill Harriman, Rita Hayworth, Gene Tierney, countless other high-profile lovers, as well as the UCLA Pep Squad, the Pan American Airlines stewardess brigade, and a cast of gorgeous thousands from various Hollywood epics, take your pick. He needed a spreadsheet to keep track of the sheet spreads on his schedule.

Tittums Walking Out With The Parrot.

What's the book? In 1858, The Faithless Parrot by Charles H. Bennett was published by George Routledge and Co. of London as part of their New Toy Books series. The great, innovative color printer Edmund Evans engraved and printed the book's seven woodcuts based upon Bennett's designs.

It's the (one and only) cautionary tale of Paul Parrot, who, having seduced Tittums, a cat, from the arms of her lover, Fido, a dog (it's a modern relationship), and then two-timing her with the widow Mrs. Daw, a comely jackdaw,  gets his comeuppance when Tittums catches him in the act and he gets plucked within an inch of his life. 

The Parrot Courting The Jackdaw.

"Nothing is more noble, nothing more venerable than fidelity. Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the parrot mind" (Marcus Tullius Psittacine Cicero). It's a lesson Paul Parrot missed at Eton.

He's a votary of Oscar Wilde: "Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect - simply a confession of failures” (The Picture of Dorian Gray).

Eaves-Droppers.

To which I can only reply, Double, double, toil and trouble: Bill Shakes knew what he was talking about - I date more than one bird at a time and I'm a nervous wreck;  I'm faithful secondary to woeful and that's fine with me. I once woke up with two scarlet macaws and an African Gray next to me in a sleazy nest. They must have slipped me a Rophie - I have no idea how I got there and, worse, have no memory of what was probably an ecstatic night but all l took away from it was feather-burn and a hangover. So much for bird of paradise wanna-be's.

It never ceases to amaze me how some kitties will fall for any suave hookbill with a silver-tongue, to wit:

The Parrot Exposed.

"One morning, when Tittums came in from a visit she had been paying her mamma, she was followed by a gentleman from the tropics, who, with all the impudence of his race, made himself quite at home, pressed Tittums’ paw to his heart, called her 'the loveliest of Cats,' asked her to oblige him with a song, which he had been told she could sing very sweetly, and never took the least notice of poor Fido, who was sitting in the corner. To tell the truth, poor Fido was very cross, and began to growl quite savagely; the more so when, to his dismay, he beheld the pleasure with which Tittums heard all this nonsense. He could not think what right the bold stranger had to come there unasked; for all that he had bright red and green feathers, a rakish, broad-brimmed hat, and a gold-headed walking-cane, he was not good-looking, that was very certain.

"But Tittums was very much struck by his appearance and bearing; his feathers were so pretty, he spoke so many languages, shrieked so terribly and in such a loud voice, had travelled so much, and was so struck by the beauty of Tittums, that, poor little Cat as she was, she ceased to care a button for faithful Fido, and kept all her sly glances for Mr. Paul Parrot.

“'Lovely Tittums,' said Mr. Paul, 'you must forget such upstart puppies as Fido. Listen to me—I am a traveller—I speak five languages,—I have a palace made of golden bars, within which is a perch fit for a king,—I have a pension of bread and milk and Barcelona nuts: all of which I will share with you. Tomorrow we will go for a trip into the field next to the house. Good-bye for the present, my dear Pussy Cat;' and he went away kissing his hand."

Pussycats, this is the bird your mother warned you about. Never trust a mister who kisses his own hand.

The Parrot Getting a Good Picking.

Because this is a typical mid-nineteenth century children's book it's a didactic moral tale that must conclude with Mr. Paul Parrot paying the wages of sin.

"As soon as Mrs. Daw was left alone with Paul, she began to upbraid him with his falseness. 'You vulgar, stuck-up, ugly, awkward deceiver! You have neither honesty enough to live by, nor wings enough to fly with.' Whereupon she jumped at him and gave him such a plucking as spoilt his good looks.

"Never after this was the Parrot able to hold up his head. Every one scorned him; even his golden palace turned out to be a brass cage; and for his misdeeds a chain was fastened round his leg. He was confined to a wooden perch, which, out of pure spite, he was always pecking."

No compulsive horn-dog parrot pecker one-liners. Sorry to disappoint. What am I, Henny Youngbird?

There was a parrot-babe knocking on my hotel room door all night! Finally, I let her out.
 

I know a parrot who's frank and earnest with pussycats. In Fresno, he's Frank and in Chicago he's Ernest.

Take my mate - please!

Rimshot.

I give The Faithless Parrot 5-Seeds, my highest rating. It's a true rarity; according to OCLC there are less than a dozen copies in institutional holdings worldwide. The Cotson Children's Library at Princeton only has it as reprinted within Routledge's 1865 compilation, The Comical Story Book With Comical Illustrations: Printed In Colours. It was separately reprinted by Routledge in 1870.

I'll have that filbert now.
__________

BENNETT, Charles H. The Faithless Parrot. Designed and Narrated by… London: G. Routledge and Co., n.d. [1858]. First edition. Quarto. 15, [1] pp. Seven full-page woodcuts engraved and printed in color by Edmund Evans.

Rear wrapper.

__________

Images courtesy of The Gutenberg Project, with our thanks.

__________

Of Related Interest:

The Writing Parrot On Rare Parrot Books.

Parrots Found In Rare Book On German Birds: The Writing Parrot Squawks.

The Shadow Of Your Smile Is A Monkey: The Caricatures Of Charles H. Bennett.
__________

__________ 

Louis Icart: Leda And The Swann Auction

by Stephen J. Gertz

Swann Auction Galleries is offering a copy of the Louis Icart-illustrated edition of Leda, Pierre Loüys adaptation of the classic tale from Greek mythology, Leda and the Swan, in their 19th & 20th Century Prints and Drawings sale this Thursday, March 7, 2013. One of 125 copies on vélin crème out of a total edition of 147 with sixteen drypoint etchings by Icart, it is estimated to sell for $2,500 - $3,500.

Leda and the Swan is the Greek myth in which the god Zeus, in the form of a swan, seduces, or rapes, Leda, daughter of the Aetolian king, Thestius. In later Greek mythology, Leda bore Zeus's children, Helen and Polydeuces, while at the same time bearing Castor and Clytemnestra, children of her husband Tyndareus, the King of Sparta.

William Butler Yeats adapted the myth in a powerful 1924 sonnet.

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
          Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

In many versions of the story Zeus takes the form of a swan and rapes or seducs Leda on the same night she slept with her husband, King Tyndareus. In other versions, she lays two eggs from which the children hatch. In further versions, Helen is a daughter of Nemesis, the goddess who personified the disaster that awaited those suffering from the pride of Hubris.

The Middle Ages knew the myth of Leda through the literature of Ovid and Fulgentius. The artists of the Italian Renaissance were attracted to its classical theme and implicit eroticism, which Loüys made gracefully, gently explicit, the hallmark of his erotic works.

The first edition of Loüys' prose adaptation was published in an octavo by Librairie de l'art indépendant, Paris, 1893. A second, in quarto, was issued Paris: Édition du Mercure de France, 1898 with designs in color by Paul-Albert Laurens (1870-1934). Another edition was published in Paris, 1920, by Librairie Borel with illustrations by  Antoine Calbet (1860-1944). In 1920, a privately printed English translation by American poet and classical scholar Mitchell S. Buck was published in New York in a collection titled, Byblis, Leda, and a New Adventure, limited to 925 copies.

Louis Justin Laurent Icart (1888-1950) was born in Toulouse, France.  In 1907, at age nineteen, he moved to Paris and began to study painting, drawing, and etching. Icart is best known for his delightful etchings that captured the free spirit of life in Paris during the opening decades of the twentieth century and became a leading exponent of Art Deco design. By the late 1920s he was working for major fashion and design studios and had become artistically and financially successful. Though his style reflected the élan of Deco, it owed much to his studies of earlier artists such as Jean Antoine Watteau, Jean Honoré Fragonard and François Boucher. He also drew inspiration from the Impressionists as well as the Symbolist artists Odilon Redon and Gustave Moreau.

The limitation to Icart's Leda by Loüys is as follows:

• One copy on japon containing all of the original drawings and sketches, signed, one original copperplate, No.1

• Four copies on japon with a set of the first state and a set of the second state with remarques plus one copper plate, nos. II - V.

• Eleven copies on japon containing a set of the 2nd state with remarques plus one copper plate, nos.

VI - XVI.

• Three copies on velin blance with a set of the 2nd state with remarques, nos. 17 - 19.

• Three copies on velin teinte with a set of the 2nd state with remarques, nos. 20 - 23.

• 125 copies on velin crème, nos. 23 - 147.

This is a scarce edition in any example of its limitation. There appears to be only one copy in institutional holdings worldwide, at the Bibliothéque Nationale de France. According to ABPC, only one copy has previously come to auction within the last thirty-six years, the singular example, copy No.1 on japon containing all of the original drawings and sketches, signed, with one original copperplate. It sold at Sotheby's, May 22, 1997, lot 20 for $5,216.

__________

[ICART, Louis, illustrator. LOÜYS, Pierre. Lêda ou la Louange des bienheureuses ténèbres, de Pierre Louÿs. Conte imagé de seize gravures à la pointe-sèche par Louis Icart. Paris: L. Icart (impr. de P. Renouard), [February] 1940. First edition thus, one of 125 numbered copies on vélin crème, from a total edition of 147. this being copy no. 102 . Quarto (11 1/2 x 8 in.; 290 x 205 mm, sheets). 24 pp. Sixteen drypoints printed in blue, five full-page. Full margins, loose as issued.

Original printed paper wrappers and marbled paste board portfolio and slip case.

___________

Images courtesy of Swann Auction Galleries, with our thanks.

___________
___________

The Shadow Of Your Smile Is A Monkey: The Caricatures Of Charles H. Bennett

by Stephen J. Gertz

In 1857, Shadows, an octavo album of thirty-six plates in wrappers, was published. Quite popular, in the next year the album, reduced to thirty plates but now with accompanying text, was serialized  by Kent & Co. in ten parts in nine issues 1858-1860 as Shadows and Substance.  It, too, was a best-seller. Finally, as the last issue was published, Shadows and Substance was released in book form.

The artist was Charles H. Bennett. The primary author of the biographical pasquinades accompanying each plate was Robert B. Brough.

A delightful and quite unusual fictional satire, Shadows and Substance was based on the premise that  a unique magic lantern in Bennett's  possession produced shadow-portraits that reflected the substance of the sitter, i.e. Hickory B. Nutt, Esq.'s vupine shadow is that, indeed, of a very foxy fellow. Each of the fictional characters' shadow is that of the spirit within, to comic effect. The result was novel, clever, quite amusing, and as a result "Bennett achieved wide popularity with his Shadows..." (Houfe).

"The work originated with the artist -- the writer's share of it being ... accessorial and supplementary" (Original preface, p. [5] of Part One, not reprinted here). Robert B. Brough (1828-1860) wrote twenty-eight of the thirty sketches, including L'Envoi, the verse addressed to Bennett that concludes the book and is signed "R.B.B." Journalist H. Sutherland Edwards (1828-1906) a friend of Bennett, wrote two sketches, one signed with full name, the other with initials.

The book is comprised of sheets from the original serial. The plates in the original (w/o text) and the serial issue (with text) were not hand-colored; it was not economically feasible to do so. Book-format copies that are hand-colored are scarce: the thirty-three copies in institutional holdings appear to be in black and white; OCLC typically notes whether illustrations are in color and makes no reference to hand-colored plates. Of the handful that have come to auction within the last thirty-six years only half were hand-colored.

Charles Henry Bennett (1828-1867), illustrator and caricaturist, was apparently untrained yet was already contributing to the British illustrated press by 1855, ultimately working for The Comic Times, Comic News, Illustrated Times, and Punch. He rose to fame for his illustrations to The Fables of Aesop (1857), and illustrated childrens books, including The Sad History of Greedy Jim and All His Brothers (1858), The Book of Blockheads (1863), and The Sorrowful Ending of Noodledoo (1864).  In 1859, Charles Kingsley sponsored him to provide illustrations to an edition of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, the results commanding the respect of a broad literary circle.

Robert Barnabas Brough was a journalist, poet, novelist, essayist, satirist, and playwright. The December 1853 issue of Graham's Magazine published a Brough parody of Poe's The Raven entitled, The Vulture: An Ornithological Study, later reprinted in William Evens' Cyclopedia of Wit and Humor (1858). He was a contributor to Dickens' magazine, Household Words.

Brough was a part of London's bohemian circle of writers and a founding member of the Savage Club, an unpretentious literary society/gentleman's club established in 1857, according to Percy Bradshaw's Brother Savages and Guests: A History of the Savage Club (1958), in "the spirit of pure wantonness" and named after Richard Savage (b. 1697), a shady, satirical poet of the eighteenth century, crony of Samuel Johnson, brawler, libeler, man of irregular habits and penurious who died in debtor's prison in 1743.

"Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit" (Thoreau).

__________

BENNETT, Charles H. and Robert B. Brough. Shadow and Substance. London: W. Kent & Co. (Late D. Bogue), 1860.

First edition in book form. Octavo (8 3/8 x 5 1/4 in; 213 x 133 mm). [8], 232 pp. Thirty hand-colored plates, including frontispiece. 

Cf. Allibone, Supplement I, p. 219, (serial issue).

___________

Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
___________
___________

Sangorski & Sutcliffe Celebrate Elizabethan Poets

by Stephen J. Gertz

Around  1920, Sangorski & Sutcliffe, the famed London bindery established in 1901 by Francis Sangorski (1875-1912) and George Sutcliffe (1875-1943), designed and bound a first edition copy of Charles Lamb's Specimens of English Dramatic Poets Who Lived About the Time of Shakespeare, published in 1808.

It's an extravagant theme binding in full teal crushed morocco with double fillet, gilt-rolled dog's tooth and dotted borders surrounding an inner band of onlaid crimson morocco with quote by vicar and poet Robert Herrick (1591-1674) in gilt with gilt tools, and a gilt-tooled frame with gilt cornerpieces enclosing a central medallion of massed gilt tools encircling an onlaid crimson morocco disc featuring stylized gilt initials, "C.L." (Charles Lamb) to the front cover. The spine is in black morocco.

The rear cover reiterates the design but with a different Herrick quote and a wreath/torch/bow & arrow motif in gilt to the central crimson disc, rather than Lamb's initials.

Deep purple morocco doublures with quote in gilt by Herrick (to upper) and lyre and laurel gilt-tooled cornerpieces highlight the inner covers, the whole framed by multiple gilt-rolled borders. Mauve silk free-endpapers with gilt-rolled border are an attractive detail. Gilt rolled and ornamented compartments, gilt ruled raised bands, and top edge gilt finish it.

The quotes by English poet, Rev. Robert Herrick, that adorn the covers and upper doublure  are pulled from his poem, Upon Master Fletcher's Incomparable Plays (1647). To upper cover band: Here's words with lines, and lines with scenes consent / To raise an Act to full astonishment. To lower cover band: Here melting numbers, words of power to move / Young men to swoon and maids to die for love. To upper doublure: To Master Fletcher / Apollo sings, his harp resounds; give room / For now behold the golden Pomp is come / Thy pomp of plays.

Elizabethan poets whose work is represented by Lamb include Thomas Sackville; Thomas Kyd; Christopher Marlowe; Thomas Decker; Ben Jonson; William Rowley; John Fletcher; Francis Beaumont; etc.

Charles Lamb was born in London in 1775. He studied at Christ's Hospital where he met and formed a lifelong friendship with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. When he was twenty years old he endured a bout of insanity and was confined to an asylum. The next year, 1796, his sister, Mary Ann, murdered their mother and was declared a "lunatic." She, too, was confined to an asylum but was eventually discharged into the care of her brother. Charles became friends with a group of young writers who supported political reform, including Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Hazlitt, Henry Brougham, Lord Byron, Thomas Barnes and Leigh Hunt.

In 1796 Lamb contributed four sonnets to Coleridge's Poems on Various Subjects (1796). This was followed by Blank Verse (1798) and Pride's Cure (1802). He worked for the East India Company in London but moonlighted as a contributor to several journals and newspapers including London Magazine, The Morning Chronicle, Morning Post and the The Quarterly Review. He is best known for his pseudonymous essays for London Magazine, collected and published as Essays of Elia (1823), and for Tales From Shakespeare (1807), a wildly successful collaboration with his sister. Specimens of English Dramatic Poets Who Lived About the Time of Shakespeare went a long way to re-introducing and popularizing Shakespeare's contemporaries. He died in 1834. 

Stamp-signed to lower doublure.
S&S were proud of this binding;
it is rare to find "Designed and bound"
in their signature. "Bound by" is the usual.

Robert Herrick was a 17th century poet of the tempus fugit-carpe diem school who wrote at least one poem that has earned enduring fame in English literature, with an immortal first line known to everyone even if they don't know the poem or poet.

TO THE VIRGINS, TO MAKE MUCH OF TIME

by Robert Herrick

GATHER ye rosebuds while ye may,
    Old time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
    To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
    The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
    And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
    When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
    Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
    And while ye may go marry:
For having lost but once your prime
    You may for ever tarry.

__________

[SANGORSKI & SUTCLIFFE, binders]. LAMB, Charles. Specimens of English Dramatic Poets Who Lived About the Time of Shakespeare. With Notes. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1808.

First edition. Octavo (7 1/8 x 4 1/4 in; 181 x 108 mm). xii, 484 pp.

__________

Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
__________
__________