The Tour[s] of Doctor Syntax, in Search of the Picturesque; in Search of Consolation; in Search of a Wife… illustrated with eighty plates by T. Rowlandson.

  • Combe, William
  • London: Nattali and Bond 1855

£380

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SKU: 1748 Category: Tags: , , ,

Description

3 vols., large 8vo, pp. [iv], 272; [iv], 277, [3, blank]; [iv], 279, [1], 4 (ads) + 80 hand-coloured aquatint plates (including a frontispiece in each volume and an additional engraved title-page in the first and third). Some pages unopened. Original pink pebble-grained cloth, boards blocked with decorative frames and borders in blind, spines lettered in gilt with a portrait of Dr Syntax also in gilt. Occasional minor spotting, a little heaver to initial leaves. Spines sunned, a little wear to joints and corners, somewhat more to spine ends, label removed from front pastedowns.

Notes

The engraved title-pages declare this the 'Ninth edition with new plates', but it isn't (that had appeared several decades earlier, with Ackermann's imprint). Nattali and Bond often published or offered remainders and disguised reprints at bargain prices; this copy contains a catalogue advertising books 'published, or sold, at very reduced prices by Nattali and Bond', including this title, marked down from £3.3s to £1.1s.6d, and the 1860 second Nicolas edition of Walton's Compleat Angler. That places the date of binding somewhere after 1860, but this is almost certainly the same sheets (apart from the printed title-pages) as those used for another Nattali and Bond issue where the printed title-pages are dated 1855. There is another title-page variant as well: most copies list 'eighty-one plates' - incorrectly - on at least one of the printed title-pages; this seems to occur in both dated and undated issues, though this one does not have the incorrect listing.

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