Details
[WESTMACOTT, Charles Molloy] The English Spy: An Original Work, Characteristic, Satirical, and Humourous, London: Sherwood, Jones and Co., 1825-26. 2 volumes, 8° (229 x 145mm). Hand-coloured aquatint frontispiece, woodcut plate "The Five Principal Orders of Society" and 70 hand-coloured plates by Robert Cruikshank, Thomas Rowlandson, Thomas Wageman and G.M. Brightly, illustrations. (Occasional spotting and offsetting.) Later green half morocco gilt, spines gilt in compartments (extremities lightly rubbed).
FIRST EDITION, with the misprint "1284" on plate 28 and page 222 in volume II blank. The Engliush Spy was once "described by Miss Prideaux as 'perhaps the most daring book ever published'". Abbey states that "an examination of a considerable number of copies has failed to produce a single instance of any copy existing without these 'points' ... the fact remains that the existence of 'second issues' is problematical, one more instance of a printing oddity of no biographical value whatever". Abbey Life 325; Prideaux pp. 310, 328; Tooley pp. 266-9. (2)
FIRST EDITION, with the misprint "1284" on plate 28 and page 222 in volume II blank. The Engliush Spy was once "described by Miss Prideaux as 'perhaps the most daring book ever published'". Abbey states that "an examination of a considerable number of copies has failed to produce a single instance of any copy existing without these 'points' ... the fact remains that the existence of 'second issues' is problematical, one more instance of a printing oddity of no biographical value whatever". Abbey Life 325; Prideaux pp. 310, 328; Tooley pp. 266-9. (2)
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