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£2,250 · Offered by Shapero Rare Books · No longer available

Lothar Meggendorfer (1847-1925), entered the publishing business in 1866 as a writer and illustrator for the satirical magazine Flying Pages, which was similar to Punch. In the 1880s he started his long running periodical, The Meggendorfer Pages. His first moving picture book was Living Pictures (1878), which he originally created for his son Adolf as a Christmas present. He went on to illustrate and engineer as many as two hundred movable books, published in both German and English and, adjusted for the separate markets. Meggendorfer's movables are some of the most complex mechanisms ever created in the genre. A pull of the tab activates a complex array of multiple levers, which in turn animates several features in each illustration. 4to (330 x 240 mm.); 8 amusing moving tableaux comprising: A Butterfly Catcher, Woman at the opera, Billiard Player, a boy presenting flowers to his Granny, A Beer Drinker, A boy Stealing Apples, The Angler, The Latchkey and the Arrest of the Turk, each with a rhyme printed opposite, finger-soiling and some light offsetting from rusty rivets but colours still bright; publisher's illustrated, paper-covered boards, cloth spine rebacked, dust-soiled, rubbed and chipped on extremities but all considered very good.

• Binding: Hardcover

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