Ballads: ... founded on Anecdotes relating to Animals, with Prints, designed and engraved by William Blake

WILLIAM BLAKE ILLUSTRATED
first edition 8vo. [2 (blank)], [8 (title leaf, preface leaf, a blank leaf, half or sub-title)], 212, [2 (contents and colophon)], [2 (blank)]pp., 5 plates by Blake (untrimmed and clearly exhibiting the plate mark), near contemporary maroon roan backed boards, marbled paper over boards, edges untrimmed as issued, paper title label on spine lettered in faded ink manuscript, plain later endpapers, light water stain at the lower gutter side of the last 2 leaves (mainly evident on the terminal blank leaf) with very light marks at the same point on neighbouring leaves (including the last plate), leaves A4-A5 a trifle creased and dusty, some light dustiness mainly at the untrimmed edges, some plates with light foxing and some lightly toned at the untrimmed edges, last plate (The Horse) with small patch of light surface abrasion at lower corner (outside the image but inside the plate mark), occasional other minor dusty smudges, generally a very good and pleasing copy.
Armorial bookplate of James Balfour (slightly damaged).

Bentley Blake Books, 465
The plates are signed below the images "Blake inv & s[c]' and have the imprint 'Pubd. [or Pub'd] june 18, 1805, by R. Phillips N[o]6 Bridge Street Black Friers".Plates 1 to 3 inclusive are in the second, more extensively worked, state. Plates 4 and 5 are in the first and only state. This copy has a comma (rather than a full stop) after 'BLAKE' on the title page (as in the copy at Princeton with plates 1 and 2 in the second state).
This book is possibly a copy in the original boards that have at some later point in the nineteenth century been backed with maroon roan, and the boards covered with cloth and then with marbled paper and supplied with new endpapers, possibly by an amateur. The bookplate looks as if it may have been lifted from an earlier setting and relaid.