The Annals of Crime, And Newgate Calendar. Complete Run, Issues 1-53

A Scarce and Short-Lived Crime Periodical from Late Georgian London [Crime]. [Newgate Calendar]. The Annals of Crime, And Newgate Calendar. Vol. 1, Nos. 1-53 [all published]. [London]: Published every Saturday Morning, for the Proprietor, by Berger, 1833-1834. 44, 50-424 pp. Issue No. 6 incomplete but likely as-issued. Quarto (9-3/4" x 7-1/2"; 26 x 19 cm). Original plain publisher's boards, text block edges untrimmed. Worn, boards detached, signatures loose, first leaf rehinged onto front pastedown. Moderate toning to interior, light browning in places, chipping and edgewear to some leaves, tears to leaf 2H4 (pp. 239-240) with loss to text at upper left and lower right corners. Item housed in archival box. An interesting and scarce title. $750. * A classic example of London's penny literature, The Annals of Crime continues the tradition of Newgate calendars past and delivers florid accounts of treason, murder, robbery, forgery, piracy and many other crimes. Cheap and ubiquitous, periodicals like this inspired and provided source material for Charles Dickens and many other novelists. The Annals was issued individually by number, in parts of six numbers each, and in a single bound volume. Based on the binding and condition, the present copy is probably one of the single-volume issues; for this reason, we believe the missing content from No. 6 is due to a contemporary error by the printer. Like all other issues in the volume, it consists of 8 pp., but its account of the execution of Louis Mandrin is unfinished. We could not find a digital copy identical to ours for comparison. Issues of this short-lived periodical are scarce today. OCLC locates print copies at 6 institutions worldwide (British Library, Oxford, SUNY-Binghamton, University of California, UCLA, University of Minnesota). …