The Dandies' Ball, or, High Life in the City
London, John Marshall, 1819.
Duodecimo, [16] leaves, each printed one side only, with hand-coloured engraved title vignette and 15 half-page hand-coloured engraved illustrations.
Original saddle-sewn stiffened orange wrappers, with an engraved and hand-coloured title cartouche on the front cover (with variant lettering 'The Dandie's Ball'); covers a little marked and rubbed, with minor wear along the spine; scattered light foxing and some light stains internally; unobtrusive pencilling to the blank faces of two leaves; nevertheless, a very good copy of an ephemeral publication.
The first edition of this charming Regency children's book, with illustrations after Robert Cruikshank. Charles Dickens and George Sala would later reminisce: 'We date from the time of the Prince Regent, and remember picture-books about dandies - satires upon that eminent personage himself, possibly - but we never knew it.... The picture-book that seems to have been our first, was about one Mr Pillblister (in the medical profession, we presume, from his name), who gave a party... [The illustrations] represented male dandies in every stage of preparation for this festival: holding on to bed-posts to have their stays laced; embellishing themselves with artificial personal graces of many kinds; and enduring various humiliations in remote garrets' (cited in Catherine Waters: 'Dickens, "first things" and the rites of growing up', 2016).
Item #131590
Price (AUD):
$900.00