Londres

pp. 47, (1) + Ten etched plates. Top edge gold gilt. Half morocco leather over marbled boards binding. Front board recently detached. 8vo. Apparently the second part of two., with 10 of the twenty etched plates. A famous Victorian satirical work, illustrated by Cruikshank. First Edition. Cohn 176. George Cruikshank (1792-1878) was a humorist of the school of Hogarth, and is considered by some to be one of the best that Britain has produced. He was the son of a Scottish painter, Isaac Cruikshank, and apparently his talent was such that he could draw as soon as he could write. From the beginning he was concerned with satire. At a young age he achieved public notice by painting theatre backdrops (the first was for Drury Lane Theatre, London). In the early 1820s he made etchings for the pamphleteer William Hone, but his political caricature work was soon overtaken by his work as a book illustrator. Life in London (1821) was followed by Tales of Irish Life (1824), and then a series of further books at an ever increasing rate. His best known work was for Charles Dickens, starting with Sketches by Boz and reaching its zenith, perhaps, with Oliver Twist. Among his large number of other illustrated books were a Grimm's Fairy Tales (1827), a Pilgrim's Progress and Paradise Lost, and seven novels by Harrison Ainsworth. Despite his large oeuvre, more than 15,000 drawings in his lifetime, Cruikshank was never well off. He required financial assistance from friends in 1866 (led by Ruskin), and late in life relied on a modest pension from the civil list and a Turner annuity from the Academy. **PRICE JUST REDUCED SW3