The Comic History of England

This classic playful history of England featuring 20 hand coloured plates and additonal vignette woodcuts by John Leech. Leech, best known for his long association with Punch, is also celebrated as the first illustrator of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. These volumes offers Gilbert Abbott A’ Beckett’s famed humorous retelling of British history, beginning with the Roman invasion and continuing through William the Conqueror, Henry VIII, the Commonwealth, and ending with George II. A’ Beckett, an English humourist, was likewise known for his popular comic interpretation of Roman history.

Good Condition. All plates present. Half bound in green leather with marble paper covered boards. Binding is firm. Pages 131-4 in volume 2 are slightly loose. Pages are moderately tanned and foxed. Neat previous owner's inscription to end papers. Boards have moderate edge-wear with some peeling to edges and spine ends. Notable rubbings to boards. Peeling to board's marble edges.