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

FIRST EDITION. Quarto. Royal thick paper copy. [2], xl, 332 pp. Engraved portrait frontispiece of Thomas Bewick, vignette to title page and quartet of portraits of Bewick to pp. xxvi-xxxi; illustrated throughout with engraved head and tail-pieces. Superb full bottle-green levant morocco bound by Riviere, with five raised bands, gilt titles to spine, heavy gilt foliate decoration to compartments, and triple gilt-ruled border to boards with embellished corners and central gilt floral cartouche. All edges gilt; marbled endpapers and gilt dentelles. Boards very slightly scuffed. Armorial bookplates of Lord Battersea and the Duke of Gloucester, to front paste-down and ffep respectively. Scattered light foxing, mainly to endpapers, otherwise contents are crisp. A handsome copy in excellent condition. Companion volume to Fables of Aesop, produced by Emerson Charnley from blocks he purchased from Thomas Wilson of York, with no input from the engraver. "Mr Bewick has no concern or interest whatever in the work submitted by the public" and though he accepted a copy for his own library following some acrimonious correspondence, the work was far from satisfactory to Bewick himself. This is an outstanding copy in a superb binding, with the added provenance of being from the library of Prince Henry of Gloucester. Prince Henry (1900-1974) was the third son of King George V and Queen Mary, and the younger brother of Kings Edward VIII and George VI. Tattersfield, Nigel: Thomas Bewick The Complete Illustrative Work, pp., 622-5.…