Item #53470 Odds & Ends collected and arranged by an improvable M. P.
Odds & Ends collected and arranged by an improvable M. P.
Odds & Ends collected and arranged by an improvable M. P.
Odds & Ends collected and arranged by an improvable M. P.
Odds & Ends collected and arranged by an improvable M. P.
Odds & Ends collected and arranged by an improvable M. P.
Odds & Ends collected and arranged by an improvable M. P.
Odds & Ends collected and arranged by an improvable M. P.

Odds & Ends collected and arranged by an improvable M. P.

London [?]: ca. late 1880s, colophon dated 1890. 4to, approx. 24 leaves including full color title page (incorporating 9 vignette portraits and 1 small albumen photograph portrait of a woman (Annie Wise? - see below) and 86 individual whimsical and humorous pen & ink sketches (mostly 5¼" x 4" but 10 of them 5½" x 8"); in the first section the artist takes a humorous whack at "Selections of the Most Notorious Poets, including Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Samuel Johnson, Tennyson, and Spenser; the second section concerns "Farming as a Fine Art: Letters on Agricultural Labourers and pursuits ... thus rendering farming a delight to the scientific and a profit to the fine art-full, by Mrs. Hold Gosling of the Science and Arts Department, South Kensington"; the third section is titled "A Day's Changes," four illustrations of a boy, a girl, and their dog in the countryside; the fourth section is titled "Breviates 'Brevity is the Sole of Wit' [Bacon, Shakespeare or some other fellow]"; the fifth section is titled "Studies in Black and White and a Few other Colors"; the fifth section is titled "Arts and Sciences: Seasonable Cookery / Save all your Coal by buying the new caloric apparatus"; the sixth section is titled "Concise Medical Treatise [new edition]"; and the last, "A Novel in Three Chapters." At the back is a separate title: A Jubilee Journey or the Adventures of the Hon. Miss Sap-Green, by Gabriel Gammon, 6 leaves, including a full-page color title and a colophon (dated 1890), and 15 original pen & ink sketches, each with a lengthy caption; a manuscript note mounted on the front free endpaper reads: "To Annie Wise, the guide, philosopher, & friend of many years, this Book of Sketches is presented by the artist as a memorial of their long friendship... [signed:] M.S.P." Some wear and minor loss at the corners of a few leaves; all else very good in contemporary red pebble-grain cloth, neatly rebacked. Item #53470

Price: $4,500.00