VERNE, Jules

The Green Ray

London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1883. The Scarcest of All Verne First Editions VERNE, Jules. The Green Ray. Translated From the French by Mary de Hautville. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1883. First British edition and First edition in English, the five shillings issue with plain edges, with 32 page publisher's catalogue, September 1883, at rear. Octavo (7 x 4 3/4 in; 178 x 121 mm). viii, 312, 32 (publisher's catalog) pp. Frontispiece, title vignette and forty-three black and white plates (included in pagination) by L. Benett, reprinted from the first French edition. One map. Publishers ochre cloth, front cover pictorially decorated in red and black, title lettered in gilt, rear cover decoratively bordered in blind, spine pictorially decorated in red and black and lettered in gilt, blue-gray floral endpapers. The mildest of rubbing to the extremities, internally immaculate, a near fine and untouched copy. The scarcest of all Verne first editions. Only two copies have come to auction within the last thirty-six years, one rebound, the other "becoming loose." Published in September 1883, a month before George Munro's pirated "Seaside Library" edition. The Green Ray was something of a departure for Verne, a love story set in Scotland, wherein a girl refuses to marry the man her uncles have chosen for her unless she sees the mysterious "green ray," which would tell her it is true love. After numerous failed attempts the phenomenon eventually becomes visible, but the couple, gazing into each other's eyes, miss it. Green flashes or rays are actual optical phenomena that occur shortly after sunset or before sunrise, when a green spot is visible for a short period of time above the sun or a green ray shoots up from the sunset point. It is usually observed from a low altitude where there is an unobstructed view of the horizon, such as on the ocean. Taves & Michaluk V023. Myers 31. .

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Book number: 04577

Catalogue: Illustrated Books

Keywords: European Literature Fantasy Literature Literature Nineteenth-Century Literature

WAIN, Louis; THOMSON, Hugh

Book of Drawings, A.

London: Privately Printed for Mr. & Mrs. F.T. Davies, 1891. A Night in Town" - Probably Louis Wain's Very First Published 'Cat Caricature' [WAIN, Louis, artist]. [DOBSON, Austin, contributor]. A Book of Drawings. By A. Bryan, L. Davis, A.T. Elwes, Harry Furniss, J. Jellicoe, Louise Jopling, J.B. Partridge, Jo. Pennell, R.H. Moor, H. Railton, Hugh Thomson, L. Wain, C. Wilkinson & W. Wilson: with a prefatory poem by Austin Dobson. London: Privately Printed for Mr. & Mrs. F.T. Davies, [1891]. One of a hundred large paper copies on hand-made paper, signed by F.T.W. Davies, the plates individually signed by the illustrators. 43, [1 imprint] pp. Folio (12 7/8 x 10 3/8 inches; 326 x 263 mm.). Original thin white vellum over parchment wrappers. Front cover decoratively stamped and lettered in gilt. A near fine copy. The two Louis Wain drawings, each of which is signed by Wain in pencil are: "A Night in Town" and [A Single Cat]. From studying the 209 entries in Rodney Dale's A List of Books Illustrated by Louis Wain, it would appear that A Book of Drawings (Dale 20, 1891) was only preceded by Madame Tabby's Establishment (Dale 141, 1886) and Dreams by French Firesides (Dale 56, 1890). We believe that the drawing "A Night in Town" is most probably the very first published Louis Wain 'multi-cat caricature'. Extremely rare - OCLC lists just two copies in libraries worldwide: Yale University Library, CT. and R. G. Menzies Library, ANU, Canberra. "Mr. and Mrs. Davies, who are well known for their unsparing efforts on behalf of the poor of St. Pancras, have issued a book of drawings with the same charitable intentions as have been displayed in their concerts. For this purpose they have secured the services of several well-known artists, who have contributed, each with his own especial style, and the result is a recherché book of pictures not often seen. The title-page is by Herbert Horne, and Mr. Austin Dobson furnishes a prefatory poem; the artists who have sent their charitable mites are W. Wilson, H. Railton, J. Jellicoe, A.T. Elwes, Louise Jopling, Joseph Pennell, H. Furniss, C. Wilkinson, A. Bryan, R.H. Moore, J.B. Partridge, Lucien Davis, Hugh Thomson, Louis Wain, and Selwyn Image, who sends a tail-piece. Anyone wishing to make a Christmas or New Year's Gift will help on the good work Mr. and Mrs. Davies are doing by sending for a book. A special large paper edition, limited to 100 copies, printed on hand-made paper, with India proofs of the drawings, and bound in parchment, will also be issued from Wilsford House, 16 Fitzroy-street, London, W. or may be obtained through Mr. Tregaskis." (The British Bookmaker. Volume V. 1891-92). "Until 1890, Louis Wain had made little or no attempt to portray cats as anything other than fluffy animals which, though they slept between sheets, or wrote letters with quill pens, were otherwise recognisably feline. The 'Louis Wain cat' had not yet been born. But in 1890, he began to explore the possibility of the comic cat; cats drawn in human situations - or humans drawn as cats, which amount to the same thing. He insisted that he did not caricature cats, but drew them as he saw them, though his approach makes it clear that he generally saw them as humans. Naturally, then, he studied humans when drawing cats. ' If I want a mild, irresponsible caricature, a grinning cat, then I have to let loose my nature impressions and let myself go on my own account, and it is astonishing what variety one can get in this way, and how one's moods vary from day to day. I have done as many as one hundred and fifty laughing cats at a time, no two being alike. ' There is another way of sketching cats, and this way I often resort to. I take a sketch-book to a restaurant or other public place, and draw the people in their different positions as cats, getting as near to their human characteristics as possible. This gives me double nature, and these studies I think my best humorous work.' The foundations of this approach were laid in 1890. That Christmas, there appeared in Holly Leaves and the Illustrated London News 'A Cats' Christmas Dance and 'A Cats' Party, respectively.. By now, Louis Wain was a household name. He was sufficiently famous to be mentioned by M. H. Spielmann (1858-1948), the eminent Victorian artists' biographer, in his monograph on the Dutch cat-artist Henriette Ronner in which he wrote: "That after all this lapse of time her work should till lately be practically new to our metropolis is equally a misfortune to art-lovers and an injustice to the artist. We have, and have had, cat-painters of ability here in England: in Mr Couldery, Mr Walter Hunt and Mr Louis Wain we have men who understand and appreciate feline beauty and feline character.. It is a mark of Louis Wain's fame that in 1890 he was elected to the Presidency of the National Cat Club, following the resignation of Mr Harrison Weir." (Rodney Dale. Louis Wain. The Man who drew Cats, pp. 26 & 29). Dale, 20. .

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Book number: 02895

Catalogue: Illustrated Books

Keywords: THOMSON, Hugh Signed Limited Edition Cats

WOODWARD, George Moutard

Gradation from a Greenhorn to a Blood

London: William Holland, 1790. To hold, as 'twere, the Mirror up to Nature." (William Shakespeare) The Rarest of all 'Mustard' George's Publications.. WOODWARD, George Moutard. Gradation from a Greenhorn to a Blood. Altered from an Original Essay, published about the Year 1740; And Adapted to the Taste and Fashion of the Year 1790: With Several Additions; and The Progressive Situations Represented in Characteristic Designs, Exhibiting the following Characters from Life.. [London: William Holland, 1790]. First (only) edition. Large folio (20 x 12 3/4 inches; 508 x 432 mm.). Engraved title-page (12 x 10 1/8 inches; 305 x 257 mm.), and eight superb tinted aquatint plates engraved (16 x 10 1/2 inches; 406 x 267 mm.), each with an accompanying leaf of text. Title-page, plates and text tipped-in to an early gray paper album. Chemised in a felt-lined quarter black morocco over marbled boards clamshell case. A wonderful series of drawings illustrating an article by John Hawkesworth, published in The Adventurer (1753), in which he traces the moral decline from "A Greenhorn", through "A Jemmy", "A Jessamy", "A Smart", "An Honest Fellow", "A Joyous Spirit", "A Buck", and finally to "A Blood". "For anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." (Hamlet - William Shakespeare). "The text was altered by Woodward from the original essay of 1740 Very rare: Only one copy found, at Yale." (William Gordon). The Plates: 1. A Greenhorn - (the simple son of a wealthy farmer - a very green country boy..) 2. A Jemmy - (four years later, now a young man void of understanding - he wanders into St. James's Park..) 3. A Jessamy - (he assumes a military air - he peeps through his eyeglass at every female he meets..) 4. A Smart - (he receives his inheritance and assumes an are of greater confidence and freedom..) 5. An Honest Fellow - (he openly declares that there is no enjoyment in life equal to women, friends, and wine..) 6. A Choice Spirit - (he becomes a mimic and sings songs of his own composition in so droll a manner..) 7. A Buck - (his topics of merriment exhausted - he has no other recourse than to mischief..) 8. A Blood - (having mortgaged his estate for more than its worth - he commits highway robbery and is imprisoned..) George Moutard Woodward (1760?-1809) was "a prolific and popular designer of social caricature much in the style of Bunbury, etched chiefly by Thomas Rowlandson and Isaac Cruikshank.. [his caricatures] display a wealth of imagination and insight into character.. extremely entertaining" (DNB). "Another popular caricaturist of the day was George Moutard Woodward, commonly called ‘Mustard George.' Woodward, according to his friend [Henry] Angelo, was the son of a land agent and spent his youth in a country town, where nothing was less known than everything pertaining to the arts. ‘A caricaturist in a country town,' said Mustard George, ‘like a bull in a china shop, cannot live without noise; so, having made a little noise in my native place, I persuaded my father to let me seek my fortune in town.' Thanks to a small allowance from his father, supplemented by his own earnings, George was able to enjoy life in his own Bohemian fashion, and ultimately took up his quarters at the ‘Brown Bear,' Bow Street, where he was able to study the inhabitants of the roundhouse and the regular attendants at the police-court. At the ‘Brown Bear' he died suddenly, departing in character with a glass of brandy in his hand, and was long mourned by his tavern associates." (Paston, Social Caricature in the Eighteenth Century, pp. 137-138). Gordon, BC-32; Not in Abbey or Tooley. .

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Book number: 04685

Catalogue: Illustrated Books

Keywords: Caricatures