[Rarebooks] fa: JAMES GILLRAY - THE "SUPPRESSED" PLATES - Bohn 1851 - Large Elephant Folio

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, auction ending Sunday, March 5. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching for the seller name arch_in_la. 

http://tinyurl.com/z3hq52g

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
Ann Arbor, MI, USA

James Gillray: The Works of James Gillray, from the Original Plates, with the Addition of Many Subjects Not Before Collected. [The "Suppressed" Plates]. London: Printed for Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden, by Charles Whiting, [1851]. First edition thus. Elephant folio (65 x 50.5 cm; 25 1/2 x 19 3/4 in.); red leather spine and corners over earlier marbled boards; engraved vignette title-page and 45 plates on 23 sheets (complete).

The uncommon supplementary volume of "suppressed" plates issued by Bohn to accompany his justifiably famous edition of Gillray's works. The forty-five plates collected here, many of them scatological or sexual in nature, were deemed too shocking for high-Victorian sensibilities, though they include some of what are nowadays considered Gillray's most iconic images (e.g., "Fashionable Contrasts" and "Lubber's Hole, alias The Crack'd Jordan," etc.). As with the other etchings published by Bohn, these were struck from the original plates, but unlike the others, the "suppressed" plates are printed on only one side of the sheet.

Foxing to the title-page and scattered lighter spotting throughout, mostly relegated to the margins, which also show some intermittent damp-staining and occasional monogram ink stamps ("MW"); a few repaired edge-tears, not affecting the images.