[Rarebooks] fa: GLANCES AT CHARACTER 1814 - Hand-Colored Aquatints by J. Clarke - Fine/Scarce

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, July 24. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/jklssfg

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA

[Anonymous; J. Clarke, illustrator:] Glances at Character. London: Printed by Whittingham and Rowland, for John Carr, 1814. FIRST EDITION. Small 8vo (16 cm) in later full calf with gilt-tooled borders and elaborately decorated spine, edges and turn-ins, top page edges gilt, the others untrimmed; viii, 158, [2] pp.; with the half-title page and publisher's adverts, and 8 hand-colored aquatint plates, including the frontispiece (complete).

A fine example of this uncommon satirical depiction of various Regency-era character types and memes: the painter, the musician, the "bounce" (a Trelawny-like bullying braggart), the country physician, the slave to fashion, the scholar of dead languages, hairdressers, tailors, old maids, old bachelors, young lovers, hasty marriages, etc. The author remains anonymous and little more is known of the artist, J.  Clarke (who signs his plates "I. Clarke"), an engraver and illustrator active in the first third of the nineteenth century. His work here is quite nice: alternately subtle and amusing, and delicately hand-colored.

Mild toning and offsetting from the plates, a very few stray small spots, else the contents are fine indeed and firmly bound in a fresh and appealing calf binding slightly bumped at one corner. One plate (no. 5) bound out of sequence. Front free-endpaper with the neat owner's inscription of noted English bibliophile Brent Gration-Maxfield, (whose library was dispersed in a series of major sales by Sotheby's), accompanied by his equally tidy bibliographic notes ("collated perfect" etc.). The only other copies (2) we find currently in commerce describe the prefatory matter as having only "vi" pages, whereas our copy has "viii." We wonder if this is just a typo committed coincidentally by two separate dealers, or if their copies are lacking the note "To the Reader," which comprises pp. vii & viii. In any case, it's present here.