Foreign Birds, Signed (1 results)

Large 8vo (230 x 142mm), ff. [ii], 133, [1]; printed on the rectos only; complete with the final leaf (R6) with the original state of the 'pigsty netty' cut; finely bound in early-19th century dark purple morocco, covers stamped with an oval design within a rectangle, spine titled in gilt; marbled endpapers. Printed in an edition of 500 copies, most of which were immediately sold to Joseph Mawman: Bewick and Beilby kept less than a fifth of the edition and sold those copies themselves. This copy has the final leaf with the pigsty plate. It is bound in a splendid purple stamped morocco binding, with a panel on both covers which is signed 'Bell & Co London'. However, it is not clear if this indicates that the book was actually bound by them, or that they only designed and manufactured the plate. There is an identical plate used on a binding for an album in the John Johnson collection in the Bodleian Library: it is illustrated in Jamieson's book, dated to c. 1833. Tattersfield TB 1.15. For the binding, see Eleanor Jamieson, English Embossed Bindings 1825-1850 (Cambridge, 1972), no. 35.