Four 19th C. Leather-Bound Books - Byron, Cruikshank, Dickens-Land

United Kingdom and United States, Victorian era. A group of four leather-bound books, three British and one American, with gilt top edges. The Boston edition of The Works of Lord Byron (Phillips, Sampson, and Company) includes his suppressed poems and a sketch of his life. Its brown leather is blind-tooled over raised bands. George Cruikshank's Table-Book, edited by Gilbert Abbott à Beckett (Bell and Daldy), has 12 steel plates and 116 wood engravings. Its spine has gilt compartments with red inlaid quatrefoils. William R. Hughes's A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land (Chapman & Hall), illustrated by F. G. Kitton and others, is in a green half binding with marbled boards. John Hill Burton's The Book-Hunter (William Blackwood and Sons) is a new edition with a portrait frontispiece. It is bound in tan calf with ornate gilt spine panels and red and black labels. The four titles are linked by Victorian literary culture, and two of them are about the pleasures of reading and collecting. John Hill Burton (1809-1881) was a Scottish historian and advocate, best known for his multi-volume History of Scotland and for serving as Historiographer Royal for Scotland. The Book-Hunter is his affectionate, slightly mocking study of bibliomaniacs, from the obsessive auction-goer to the scholar buried in his library. It is still a favorite with collectors, who tend to recognize themselves in it. This copy is in the kind of fine gilt binding Burton's subjects would have wanted. George Cruikshank (1792-1878) was the leading English caricaturist and illustrator of his generation and the first illustrator of Dickens's Sketches by Boz and Oliver Twist. The Table-Book combines his etched plates and wood engravings with comic prose and verse edited by Gilbert Abbott à Beckett, a founding contributor to Punch. It was first issued in monthly parts before being reissued in book form. William R. Hughes's A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land is an early example of literary tourism. It follows Dickens's Kent, including Rochester, Gad's Hill, and the Medway towns, and identifies places from the novels. Its many illustrations, led by Frederic George Kitton (1856-1904), a Dickens scholar and draughtsman, record buildings and streets as they stood in the novelist's memory. The Byron volume is a dense single-volume American compendium of the poet's works. It is typical of mid-century Boston publishing, which made Romantic poetry available to a broad readership in sturdy, closely printed editions. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids. Item # 205573

Estimate:£259.68

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