[Rarebooks] fa: HENRY BUNBURY & GEORGE CRUIKSHANK - ODDEST OF ALL ODDITIES FOR 1813 (Scarce Chapbook)

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, September 20. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/ocjad4v

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

[Henry Bunbury; George Cruikshank, illus.:] New Oddest of All Oddities, for 1813; Being an Odd Book of all the Odd Sermons, Odd Tales, Odd Sayings, and Odd Scraps of Poetry, that have been recited and sung in all Odd Companies, by all the Odd Wits and Broad Grinners of the present Odd Age. Compiled for the Use of every Odd Subject of Great Britain, from diminutive Nine Inches to Odd Seven Feet, by their Odd and Curious Humble Servant, Geoffry Gambado, Esq. London: Printed and sold by J. Bailey, 116 Chancery Lane, and may be had of most Booksellers, [1813]. First edition thus. Small 8vo (18.5 cm), disbound, 59 + [1] pp., colored woodcut frontispiece.

While OCLC attributes this collection of jokes, tales, puns, etc., to the humorist and caricaturist Henry Bunbury, whose nom de plume was "Geoffrey Gambado," it should be noted that when it was published Bunbury had been dead for two years. OCLC's attribution of the frontispiece caricature of a Quaker, "Friend Aminidab Popjoy," to George Cruikshank, seems to be on firmer ground. While this particular title is not listed in Cohn, he does mention three different editions of Oddest of All Oddities to which Cruikshank contributed a frontispiece, including one, for an undated Bailey edition, that Cohn describes as a "coloured woodcut frontispiece, 'A Quaker.'"

The text block has neatly separated into three parts, two of which a previous owner has neatly and simply backed with paper binder's tape; several leaves with repaired tears or chips to the edges, one with some loss of text; leaves toned with scattered, generally light, spotting and soiling; early ownership signature causing some bleed-through to the title-page. A very scarce humorous chapbook: OCLC locates only 2 copies worldwide, at Princeton and the University of Pittsburgh; not in the British Library.