Select Fables; with Cuts, Designed and Engraved by Thomas and John Bewick, and Other, Previous to the Year 1784: Together with a Memoir; and a Descriptive Catalogue of the Works of Messrs. Bewick

Newcastle: S. Hodgson for Emerson Charnley, and Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1820. With a double fore-edge painting by the "Thistle Painter.". Hardcover. Very good. Octavo. xl, 332pp. In his comprehensive bibliography of Thomas Bewick's work, Nigel Tattersfield describes the compilation and publication of the Bewick illustrations as an effort in reverent conservation on the one hand, and savvy recycling on the other. Emerson Charnley had rescued various of Bewick's blocks originally cut for 18th-century projects, and had acquired still others from less-interested pressmen. Charnley then cleaned Bewick out of his remaining copies of the 1818 Fables of Aesop and pitched these 1820 Select Fables as simultaneously a companion volume and general retrospective of Bewickiana. The resulting production is in some ways a hodge-podge of illustrations, some better assigned than others. Nevertheless, it is among the most representative of secondary works to treat the Bewicks. Bound in green straight-grain morocco with rolls and stamps to cover in blind and rules in gilt. Spine in five compartments with gilt titling and heavy gilt florals. The double fore-edge here suits the Bewick material, with each of the six miniatures showing pastoral scenes presented as if captured from a larger narrative. The work is identifiable as that of the "Thistle Painter" thanks to a range of stylistic tropes - as in setting each miniature within an oval - as well as the conspicuous tells couched in the titles penciled at the front flyleaf. These include the use of the word "foredge" and references to each direction as "1st side" and "reverse." Miniatures show: The Dog and the Shadow, The Lion and the Ass, The Crow and the Pitcher, The Snipe Shooter, The Stag Looking into the Water, and Fhe Fox and the Countryman. Fore-edge nearly pristine, binding with rubs along edges and light bumps to corners, foxing to frontispiece portrait of Thomas Bewick. Overall a vg+ example. Housed in slipcase. Previous owner's signature to front flyleaf. (Tattersfield TB 2.576, Weber p. 251-255)