Author: LISLE, Joseph
Title: Joe Lisle's Play Upon Words
Description: London : Thomas M'Lean, [1828]. Suit the Word to the Action, - the Action to the Word" (William Shakespeare) A Delightful Gallimaufry of Visual Wordplay, Corniness, and Puns in Caricature Forty Hand Colored Aquatint Plates LISLE, Joseph. Joe Lisle's Play Upon Words. London: Thomas M'Lean, 1828. First edition. Small oblong quarto (7 1/8 x 10 3/8 inches; 181 x 264 mm.). Letterpress title-page. Forty hand colored aquatint plates. First plate with small piece (3/8 x 2 1/4 inches) torn away from lower blank margin, last plate with small ink stain on upper blank margin, not affecting platemark and tiny piece torn away from lower corner. Plates watermarked "1828". First blank leaf with slight water-stain and contemporary ink inscription (faded). Title-page with slight water-stain. Bound ca. 1830 in dark blue morocco over blue cloth boards ruled in gilt. Spine with five raised bands decoratively tooled and lettered in gilt in compartments, pale green endpapers, all edges gilt. A very good copy. Here, then, is a charming collection by a journeyman satirical caricaturist who, if not a peer of his contemporaries Cruikshank, Seymour, Heath, Alken, and Woodward, left a notable mark, however small, in the field. As such, any work by Lisle should be considered for any serious collection of British caricature. As to why so little is known and so little produced by Lisle, one can only speculate that he was, as many journeyman artists and tradesmen of his time, perhaps a little too familiar with the inside of a bottle of ardent spirits. OCLC/KVK record only four copies in institutional holdings worldwide. Joseph Lisle (1798-1839) was a comedian, actor and artist who enjoyed a moderately successful career as a caricaturist in London during the 1820s and 30s. Based upon a small collection of individual caricatures found in the British Museum, Joseph Lisle specialized in visual wordplay and social satire. Humorous prints bearing his name began to appear the late 1820s in the windows of several London print-sellers, with Thomas McLean, G.S. Tregear and George Hunt being amongst his most noteworthy patrons. His caricatures usually dealt in pun-based humor and were chiefly rendered in etching and aquatint. George Hunt, who was an engraver as well as a print-seller, helped Lisle to realize several of his designs on copper, although intriguingly did not publish all of the plates he etched. Typical examples of his work include The Man of Taste (c.1828 – 1830), which shows a man asking a butcher to cut him some boiled beef with “a Ham’y Knife to give it a Relish.” And Cheap Music (1820 – 1828), in which the owner of a music shop advises a frugal customer that the only “cheap fiddles” to be had in the area are the phoney elixirs sold by the quack doctor next door. His most substantial endeavor in the field of pun-prints was Joe Lisle’s Play Upon Words, a series of 40 engravings published in a collected edition by Thomas McLean in January 1828. Muggy Weather, the seventeenth plate in the series, sets the tone for what follows, showing group of laborers downing large mugs of beer to refresh themselves on a warm day. The humor my be decidedly old old fashioned by our standards but it undoubtedly appealed to his contemporaries, as another notice from The Weekly Dispatch makes clear: Lisle was seemingly less preoccupied with overt forms of political or social satire, although his few forays into this field are worthy of consideration. The World. When a man is down – keep him down (1830) for example, offers a bleak view of the hardships of contemporary life and hints at Lisle’s Radical sympathies. The pro-Radical journal Figaro in London also recommended one of his political prints to its readers. The Plates: 1. A Diving Belle 2. The Dread-Nought taking A Smack 3. A Chaste Character. (Chased) 4. Muggy Weather 5. Coming off with a claw (éclat) 6. Elegant Extracts 7. A Coal Meter. (A Coal meet-Her) 8. Metaphysics. (Met-he-Physics?) 9. My Hog & I. (Mahogany) 10. A Sophist-Ical Argument 11. A Rain Bow. (Beau) 12. Empailed. (Him pailed) 13. A Cutlass. (Cut-Lass) 14. An Action off Spit-Head 15. The Infant in Arms 16. A Grenadier. (Granny-dear) 17. An Ad-mired Character 18. Misadvised. (Miss-advised) 19. A Common Sewer. (Sower) 20. A Stable Character 21. A Man Milling her. (Milliner) 22. A Pioneer. (A Pie-on-here) 23. A very amusing Company. (Ham-using) 24. Moore's (Blackamoors.) Loves of the Angels 25. Canon Law. (Cannon) 26. A Charger 27. An Officious Character. (O-Fish's) 28. Sootable (Suitable) Characters 29. May we meet more numerous & never less respectable 30. A Dutch Place. (Plaice) 31. Mistaken. (Miss-taken) 32. Taking a Galloway. (Girl Away) 33. An Armless (Harmless) Character 34. A Sub-Lime Character 35. (History) His-story 36. A Jewel. (A Jew-Ill.) 37. Lath 38. Plaister 39. A Stage Manager 40. Mutual Civility Bobins III, 870; Not in Abbey, Prideaux or Tooley. .
Keywords: Caricatures
See more books from our catalog: Color-Plate Books
Title: Joe Lisle's Play Upon Words
Description: London : Thomas M'Lean, [1828]. Suit the Word to the Action, - the Action to the Word" (William Shakespeare) A Delightful Gallimaufry of Visual Wordplay, Corniness, and Puns in Caricature Forty Hand Colored Aquatint Plates LISLE, Joseph. Joe Lisle's Play Upon Words. London: Thomas M'Lean, 1828. First edition. Small oblong quarto (7 1/8 x 10 3/8 inches; 181 x 264 mm.). Letterpress title-page. Forty hand colored aquatint plates. First plate with small piece (3/8 x 2 1/4 inches) torn away from lower blank margin, last plate with small ink stain on upper blank margin, not affecting platemark and tiny piece torn away from lower corner. Plates watermarked "1828". First blank leaf with slight water-stain and contemporary ink inscription (faded). Title-page with slight water-stain. Bound ca. 1830 in dark blue morocco over blue cloth boards ruled in gilt. Spine with five raised bands decoratively tooled and lettered in gilt in compartments, pale green endpapers, all edges gilt. A very good copy. Here, then, is a charming collection by a journeyman satirical caricaturist who, if not a peer of his contemporaries Cruikshank, Seymour, Heath, Alken, and Woodward, left a notable mark, however small, in the field. As such, any work by Lisle should be considered for any serious collection of British caricature. As to why so little is known and so little produced by Lisle, one can only speculate that he was, as many journeyman artists and tradesmen of his time, perhaps a little too familiar with the inside of a bottle of ardent spirits. OCLC/KVK record only four copies in institutional holdings worldwide. Joseph Lisle (1798-1839) was a comedian, actor and artist who enjoyed a moderately successful career as a caricaturist in London during the 1820s and 30s. Based upon a small collection of individual caricatures found in the British Museum, Joseph Lisle specialized in visual wordplay and social satire. Humorous prints bearing his name began to appear the late 1820s in the windows of several London print-sellers, with Thomas McLean, G.S. Tregear and George Hunt being amongst his most noteworthy patrons. His caricatures usually dealt in pun-based humor and were chiefly rendered in etching and aquatint. George Hunt, who was an engraver as well as a print-seller, helped Lisle to realize several of his designs on copper, although intriguingly did not publish all of the plates he etched. Typical examples of his work include The Man of Taste (c.1828 – 1830), which shows a man asking a butcher to cut him some boiled beef with “a Ham’y Knife to give it a Relish.” And Cheap Music (1820 – 1828), in which the owner of a music shop advises a frugal customer that the only “cheap fiddles” to be had in the area are the phoney elixirs sold by the quack doctor next door. His most substantial endeavor in the field of pun-prints was Joe Lisle’s Play Upon Words, a series of 40 engravings published in a collected edition by Thomas McLean in January 1828. Muggy Weather, the seventeenth plate in the series, sets the tone for what follows, showing group of laborers downing large mugs of beer to refresh themselves on a warm day. The humor my be decidedly old old fashioned by our standards but it undoubtedly appealed to his contemporaries, as another notice from The Weekly Dispatch makes clear: Lisle was seemingly less preoccupied with overt forms of political or social satire, although his few forays into this field are worthy of consideration. The World. When a man is down – keep him down (1830) for example, offers a bleak view of the hardships of contemporary life and hints at Lisle’s Radical sympathies. The pro-Radical journal Figaro in London also recommended one of his political prints to its readers. The Plates: 1. A Diving Belle 2. The Dread-Nought taking A Smack 3. A Chaste Character. (Chased) 4. Muggy Weather 5. Coming off with a claw (éclat) 6. Elegant Extracts 7. A Coal Meter. (A Coal meet-Her) 8. Metaphysics. (Met-he-Physics?) 9. My Hog & I. (Mahogany) 10. A Sophist-Ical Argument 11. A Rain Bow. (Beau) 12. Empailed. (Him pailed) 13. A Cutlass. (Cut-Lass) 14. An Action off Spit-Head 15. The Infant in Arms 16. A Grenadier. (Granny-dear) 17. An Ad-mired Character 18. Misadvised. (Miss-advised) 19. A Common Sewer. (Sower) 20. A Stable Character 21. A Man Milling her. (Milliner) 22. A Pioneer. (A Pie-on-here) 23. A very amusing Company. (Ham-using) 24. Moore's (Blackamoors.) Loves of the Angels 25. Canon Law. (Cannon) 26. A Charger 27. An Officious Character. (O-Fish's) 28. Sootable (Suitable) Characters 29. May we meet more numerous & never less respectable 30. A Dutch Place. (Plaice) 31. Mistaken. (Miss-taken) 32. Taking a Galloway. (Girl Away) 33. An Armless (Harmless) Character 34. A Sub-Lime Character 35. (History) His-story 36. A Jewel. (A Jew-Ill.) 37. Lath 38. Plaister 39. A Stage Manager 40. Mutual Civility Bobins III, 870; Not in Abbey, Prideaux or Tooley. .
Keywords: Caricatures
Price: US$ 1850.00 Seller: David Brass Rare Books (ABAA/ILAB)
- Book number: 05850
- Book number: 05850
See more books from our catalog: Color-Plate Books