Rivière

06530 — London: Printed for J. Johnston 1822. Johnny Newcome Returns: The Soldier's Comic Progress<br /> A Spirited Sequel to the Celebrated Naval Satire - With Fine Cruikshank Plates<br /> <br /> MITFORD John. My Cousin in the Army: or Johnny Newcome on the Peace Establishment. A Poem. By a Staff Officer. London: Printed for J. Johnston 1822.<br /> <br /> First edition. Octavo 9 x 5 5/8 inches; 228 x 143 mm. 4 316 pp. Sixteen hand-colored aquatint plates including frontispiece by Isaac Robert Cruikshank and Charles Williams. Plates watermarked 1821.<br /> <br /> A short marginal tear 3/4 inch to title slight creasing to plates opposite pp. 173 and 285 and a neatly restored outer blank margin to the plate opposite p. 313 loss minimal. Light offsetting from plates as usual and a few minor smudges. <br /> <br /> Handsomely bound in mid-twentieth-century full burgundy levant morocco by Rivière & Son stamp-signed on verso of front free endpaper covers with gilt double fillet border spine richly tooled and lettered in gilt in compartments gilt board edges and turn-ins marbled endpapers all edges gilt. Armorial bookplate of Harry Bradfer-Lawrence on front pastedown. An excellent copy.<br /> <br /> A lively and richly illustrated military satire My Cousin in the Army forms the companion volume to Mitford's earlier and highly successful Johnny Newcome in the Navy 1818 transferring the comic misadventures of the naïve recruit from sea to land. Cast in brisk octosyllabic verse the poem offers a vivid and often irreverent portrait of army life in the immediate aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars blending anecdote caricature and social observation in a manner closely aligned with the Regency taste for humorous narrative.<br /> <br /> The hand-colored aquatints by Isaac Robert Cruikshank and Charles Williams - both central figures in the golden age of British caricature - provide much of the work's enduring appeal. Their plates animated and theatrical capture the follies vanities and absurdities of military life with a sharp eye and a lively palette placing the work firmly within the tradition of illustrated comic narratives popularized by contemporaries such as the Doctor Syntax series and Life in London.<br /> <br /> Mitford himself remains one of the more colorful and tragic figures of the period: a former naval officer present at major engagements of the French Revolutionary Wars later reduced by dissipation and instability to a precarious literary existence. His writing - energetic unpolished and often drawn from lived experience - retains an immediacy that lends authenticity to the comic episodes described.<br /> <br /> A pleasing copy of a work that stands among the more engaging illustrated satires of the post-Napoleonic period enhanced by an attractive Rivière binding and distinguished provenance.<br /> <br /> Abbey Life 370; Tooley 166. London: Printed for J. Johnston, 1822 unknown