Less Eminent Victorians

First edition, first impression.  Unpaginated, circa 100 pages, with many woodcut illustrations throughout.  Orange cloth-covered boards, black lettering on the spine, black border rules on front panel.  8vo.  Cloth is a little tired, faded around edges, gently rubbed and rounded at corners and spine ends. Previous owner’s name on front paste down.  Hint of toning to endpapers only else internally neat, clean, bright and tight.  In its original worn, chapped and toned dust wrapper, rubbed and chipped on edges, minor loss at spine ends, shelf worn.  

Sixty woodcut illustrations reproduced from Victorian periodicals such as The Leisure Hour and The Quiver, and also from Mary Price: The Memoirs of a Servant Maid, each mockingly accompanied by a limerick.  As R D says in his preface some of the woodcuts “have been selected purely for their badness; but for the most part it is their very excellence as artistic and dramatic illustration that tempts one to exploit their Victorian habit and gesture for less serious purposes than those for which they were designed”.