SELECT FABLES . . . TOGETHER WITH A MEMOIR; AND A DESCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE OF THE WORKS OF MESSRS. BEWICK

Newcastle: Printed by S. Hodgson, for Emerson Charnley, and Balwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1820. FIRST EDITION, IMPERIAL PAPER COPY. 278 x 174 mm. (10 7/8 x 6 3/4"). 1 p.l., xl, 332 pp.
HANDSOME LATE 19TH CENTURY DEEP PURPLE MOROCCO, ELABORATELY GILT, BY TOUT (stamp-signed in gilt on front turn-in), covers with gilt-ruled border and scrolling foliate corner decoration, raised bands, spine compartments with elaborate gilt scrolled tooling surrounding a central flower motif, gilt lettering, thick turn-ins with multiple gilt rules, rolls, and scrolling, all edges gilt. Frontispiece portrait of Thomas Bewick and NEARLY 350 WOOD ENGRAVED VIGNETTES BY JOHN AND THOMAS BEWICK. Front free endpaper with book label of Archer Ryland, dated 1942 in pencil, and an old catalogue cutting tipped on. Ray, England, 52; Hugo 428; Lowndes I, 168. ◆Lower corners very slightly bumped, a hint of wear to extremities, contents with occasional faint offsetting and trivial marginal imperfections, one leaf with marginal tear expertly repaired, but all of these issues quite minor, and on the whole IN VERY FINE CONDITION INSIDE AND OUT, the paper clean and bright, the margins immense, and the binding lustrous.

This is a beautifully bound work that features some of the earliest wood engravings executed by an artist often referred to as "the father of modern wood engraving." Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) was engaged at the tender age of 14 as an apprentice to the Newcastle wood engraver Beilby, and according to Bewick's own memoirs, he spent much of his seven-year apprenticeship designing and cutting illustrations on wood for fables by Aesop, Gay, and others. These woodblocks were acquired by the publisher Thomas Saint, and they served to illustrate four fable books published by him at Newcastle in 1775, 1776, 1779, and 1784. These Newcastle publications are very difficult to acquire today and were already scarce by 1820. While Bewick himself went on to publish in his mature years an illustrated "Fables" with new cuts, the woodblocks from his youth (which include some done by Bewick's brother John) were bought up, first by a Newcastle newspaper, then by a York printer, and finally by Sarah Hodgson, the widow of a former partner of Bewick. These youthful productions of Bewick, which have extraordinary charm, reappear here with considerable success, especially in the oversize format of our copy. They are less complicated than the illustrations of his 1818 "Fables," but they have wonderful clarity, not a few touches of humor, and an excellent sense of composition. In addition, the book contains several woodcut portraits of Thomas and John, as well as a memoir of their careers and a limited catalogue of the works illustrated by them. The paper employed in the present book seems just slightly thicker and brighter than that used in the other luxury Bewick volumes. Our handsome binding is a credit to the Tout workshop, which turned out consistently fine work and was especially notable for its elaborate gilt tooling, as seen here..