Select Fables with cuts, designed and engraved by Thomas and John Bewick, and others, previous to the year 1784: together with a Memoir; and a descriptive Catalogue of the works of Messrs. Bewick

Abstract

If I called the Bewick from Midway one of the stars of my collection, I will have to find some new category for this wonderful volume! Someone's note on the first blank page says that the edition is limited to only about 25 copies on large thick paper. The size and paper distinguish the book clearly from the Midway edition. This is a beautiful and substantial book! Half calf. There is lovely marbling on the covers, page edges, and flyleaves. Some foxing. A wonderful find! See my comments on the 1975 facsimile. Now that I have, so it seems, four copies of Bewick's Select Fables of 1820, I can say that this is the most impressive. It seems to me to fit the description of Bodemann 240.2, apparently meant as a first volume of a five-volume set The Works of Thomas Bewick. This copy shares a number of features with the Midway copy, among them a last page that begins with consider and has Hodgson's printer's mark at its bottom, a church-image above the Advertisement (i), and a deer at water at its end (iv). Its paper size is 5 3/8 x almost 9. Bodemann gives a date of 1820-22 for the #240.2, but I find nothing of that here beyond the title-page's 1820.