[Rarebooks] fa: BURLESQUE TRANSLATION OF HOMER 1797 w/ Plates by GEORGE MOUTARD WOODWARD

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now along with other illustrated works, auctions ending Sunday, March 22. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/k89yxgw

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

[Thomas Bridges; George Moutard Woodward, illustrator:] A Burlesque Translation of Homer. In Two Volumes. London: Printed for G. G. and J. Robinson, 1797. The fourth edition improved (but the FIRST EDITION THUS, with plates by Woodward). Two volumes, 8vo (21.5 x 13.5 cm), in full period calf, gilt-tooled spines and contrasting morocco spine labels; [6], 360 pp.; [4], 432 pp.; with the half-titles; 27 copper-engraved plates, including the engraved title-pages. ESTC T45464.

First published in 1764 as Homer Travestie, this is the first edition to include the delightful comic illustrations by George Moutard Woodward (1760-1809), one of the leading caricaturists of the late-Georgian era. Bridges' Burlesque is a parody of the first twelve books of The Iliad, "translating" Homer's epic into contemporary vernacular and satirizing the men and mores of the day ("Fierce Melenippes could not keep / His feet, but tumbled on the heap: / He in the Borough kept a slop-shop, / Exactly o'er against a hop-shop..."). Woodward, for his part, peoples his lively images with such contemporary types as publicans, laborers, soldiers, Jews, even an American Indian.

Bumping/wear to the corners, light rubbing to the boards, some cracking to the hinges of vol. I but the boards are secure; intermittent foxing to the plates, mostly confined to the margins, occasional small spots and stains to the leaves; armorial bookplates of Sir Edmund Antrobus and signatures of [Philip?] Antrobus to the title-pages; otherwise clean and sound, securely bound. A handsome set.