The Comic History of England, 2 volumes (De Luxe Edition)

A$270 · Offered by Harry Hartog Rare Books

À BECKETT, Gilbert Abbott (illus. John Leech). The Comic History of England. London: Bradbury, Agnew, Co., [n.d., c.1864–1881]. 2 vols. Quarto. Original publisher's blue cloth, covers and spines gilt. Vol. I: xviii, 432 pp.; Vol. II: xiv, 416 pp. Title pages printed in red and black. 20 hand-coloured steel-engraved plates (10 per volume) and approximately 200 woodcut illustrations throughout by John Leech. Edition de Luxe. Tooley 295–297. Gilbert Abbott À Beckett was one of the great comic writers of the Victorian period — a barrister, police magistrate, contributor to The Times and the Morning Herald , and one of the original staff of Punch from its foundation in 1841. The Comic History of England , first published in monthly parts by the Punch Office between 1846 and 1848, was his most celebrated work, and its success was inseparable from the illustrations of John Leech, who brought to it exactly the quality of genial, affectionate mockery that À Beckett's text demanded. Leech was the pre-eminent comic illustrator of his generation — the artist who more than any other defined the visual language of Punch , and who had already shown his command of historical burlesque in his illustrations for The Ingoldsby Legends . His twenty hand-coloured etchings for the Comic History — from the bewildered dignity of Julius Caesar confronting the ancient Britons to the theatrical agonies of the Wars of the Roses — are among his finest plates, and the approximately two hundred woodcut illu

• Binding: Hardcover

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