I'm a fan. Found these in Argosy Bookstore over by Bloomingdales on 59th between Lex and Park. $3 a piece. I don't know anything about them but if you do please let me know. There's a charm to them for sure but I also like their unique angles and how they tell a story. I'm always amazed how finds like this seem to be everywhere in NYC. I wonder who owned them and how they ended up where I found them. Always a Sentimental Journey.
Charming. God knows plenty of naughtiness went on in 18th Century Europe, the Marquis de Sade, Georgian England etc.
ReplyDeleteHi;
ReplyDeleteNice picks but not 18th century, the style is more early 20th. Check out Rockwell Kent's illustrations for casanova.
The browning on the edges is acid in the wood-pulp paper, again 20 c.
Sort of an art deco 18th C.
They are from a book or folio, and are nice.
Belle- They beat Hustler.
ReplyDeleteSpalding- Late 19th Century I'm being told. Probably by TH Robinson but used to illustrate a book written in the early 18th C. There's a clue in the post.
Justine or The Misfortunes of Virtue... ?
ReplyDeleteStew- Nope. The clue is in the post.
ReplyDeleteLaurence Sterne? Tristram Shandy even better read. Please, if I have won, may I have them? History and smut, two of my best things...
ReplyDeleteELS- Right author. Wrong book. The clue for the book title is in the post. I'll send you one. You get to pick.
ReplyDeleteCool can't place the book, but late 19th would explain the acid in the paper, the style dosn't speak Victorian to me but cool the elogated body forms , Have you ever seen Le Sourire, it was a naughty french mag from the Belle Epoch till the war would fit in there great.
ReplyDeleteNot an idea of origin; but I too am intriqued.
ReplyDeleteA dangerous liasion perhaps??
Nice prints though,
L
Sterne was a clergyman - illustrated sermons??
ReplyDeleteSurely the book was Sentimental Journey? Was merely stating a preference for TS.
ReplyDeleteIf you can BEAR to split the set, I would love love love the last, C'est bien comique. Fabulously understated illustration and story of my life.
I will look after it most carefully...
....Sentimental Journey is Sterne.....not to be confused with the far better book A Sentimental Education by Flaubert which also has a sexual theme and is set in the 1840's
ReplyDeleteELS- Shit. That's the best one. And you beat Joe by one minute. Ok, it's yours. Send me an address and how much you make a year.
ReplyDeleteit was published in 1929 in london by John Lane/the bodley head ltd. Illustrator is Valenti Angelo
ReplyDelete- an old Evanstonian bookseller
Anon Bookseller-
ReplyDeleteThank you. That would explain the 'A' everywhere. Looks like TH Robinson's was published late 19th C while the style of these are, as Spalding pointed out earlier, early 20th C. I've been wrong about almost everything. By the way, can you help me find bound back issues from the London Times for Nov and Dec of 1936?
The captions "now poor la fleur" and "the lady was a piedmontese" are from The Vicar of Wakefield.
ReplyDelete"They seemed to be two upright" and "it was some poor abbe" are from A Sentimental Journey Throught France and Italy.
Watch out for those Piedmontese girls...nothing but trouble!
ReplyDelete"I'm always amazed how finds like this seem to be everywhere in NYC. "
ReplyDeleteHere's one explaination: There's a booming trade in looting antique bookplate illustrations and religious icons from libraries and churches...around the world, sadly. The older, the better. It's a cheap, fast way to make a flea market buck.
Certainly not every bookplate lithograph, silkscreen or letterpress illustration for sale is obtained that way, but the thing is, as a casual buyer, one never knows for sure if, when or how. Best to buy, as you did, from a reputable source.
-DB
Caroline Smith said...
ReplyDeleteThe captions "now poor la fleur" and "the lady was a piedmontese" are from The Vicar of Wakefield.
...never read the Vicar......Shandy is gobbledegook....a sort of 18th century Joyce....on the whole I find 18th century novels very labored.....stylistically they couldn't be more different than Jane Austen who was writing only a few years into the new century and is almost modern in idiom....one of the reasons she's lasted of course.
These are adorable! I love them, so elegant.
ReplyDeleteReally quite tame, especially for my jaded tastes. Actually very respectable. They are from the kind of gift book that would have been sold in the book dept. of B. Altman and other major upscale department stores in the 20's and 30's. Their removal from the book is no loss to our cultural legacy, don't worry.
ReplyDeleteEbenezer Howard, Jr. said...
ReplyDelete"Really quite tame"
....the equivalent of the Hays code in the movies which required that if a couple were in bed one had to have at least one foot on the floor....now there's a challenge for Hustler.