[Rarebooks] fa: "RABELAIS the YOUNGER" - A NINETEENTH CENTURY ABEILLARD AND HELOISA 1819 (Scarce Colored Plate Book)

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, July 17. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/zoeqkgt

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA

Robert Rabelais, the Younger [pseudonym]: A Nineteenth Century, and Familiar History of the Lives, Loves, & Misfortunes, of Abeillard and Heloisa, a Matchless Pair, Who Flourished in the Twelfth Century: A Poem, in Twelve Cantos. London: Printed for J. Bumpus, 1819. FIRST EDITION. Tall 8vo (23 cm), untrimmed in original publisher's printed boards, custom chemise and slipcase; xvii, [1], 384 pp.; with 10 hand-colored aquatint plates (complete). Abbey  Life 314.

The pseudonymous author's identity remains a mystery, perhaps mercifully so, as his work was rudely and universally panned by contemporary reviewers. The London Literary Gazette called it "trash," "as pernicious as it is tiresome," "wretched buffoonery" full of "dull obscenities;" and the New Monthly Magazine dismissed it as "vapid, vulgar, and disgraceful stuff" and a "labored mess of stupidity… The idea of illustrating such a thing with engravings…could never have been conceived but in times of unmeaning extravagance." Indeed, it's the charming plates, which even the fulminating reviewers concede are "pretty," that are the real attraction of the book. All but two of the delicately hand-colored plates are etched by Thomas Landseer (elder brother and frequent collaborator of Sir Edwin Landseer) after designs by John Thurston, aquatinted by George Robert Lewis. The work was also issued with the plates uncolored (see Abbey Life 315).

Joints and spine cracked and tender, but holding; some toning and light bumping to the untrimmed edges of the text block, a few leaves with  scattered spotting, mild offsetting from the plates, else clean, housed in an elaborate custom cloth chemise and slipcase, the latter with some  fraying to the edges. Uncommon with the plates colored and complete, especially so in the original printed boards.