Old Booty! : A Serio-Comic Sailor's Tale : Illustrated by Six spirited Engravings on Wood, from designs by Robert Cruikshank
London: William Kidd, 1830.
Illustrated by Robert Cruikshank. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good with no dust jacket. Item #15927
Bookplate residue on front endpapers, random foxing, otherwise light wear. Solid hardcover. ; Half morocco binding with gilt spine lettering and rulings, marbled endpapers and top edge gilt. Printed armorial stamp of Francis Frederick Fox on extra page before frontispiece. Fox was a successful Bristol merchant. Six humorous woodcut plates by Robert Cruikshank. "The story of Old Booty, the Baker, going to the Devil in the presence of a ship's crew, is well known to all lovers of the marvellous. It is here versified by Mr Moncrieff, and with a poetical spirit, which we would not have expected to find in our dramatic humourist. The illustrations by Robert Cruikshank are full of devilish light and fire - and the push-Devil, push-Baker, will henceforth supercede the mutual pull, so long maintained between those two respectable tradesmen!" - The Athenaeum, no. 156, October 23, 1830, page 665. Moncrieff, born William Thomas Thomas, was a very successful theatre manager, dramatist and author, best known for his Tom And Jerry adaptation of Pierce Egan's Life In London, as well as a later feud with Charles Dickens for having staged his own version of Nicholas Nickleby before the book parts completed publication. ; Woodcuts; 36 pages.
Price: $69.95