Life in London; or, The Day and Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorn, Esq., and his elegant friend, Corinthian Tom, accompanied by Bob Logic, the Oxonian, in their Rambles and Sprees through the Metropolis
London: Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, 1821. George and Isaac Robert Cruikshank illustrations. First Edition. Leatherbound. 8vo. Pp. xvi, 376. Frontis. hand-colored engraving, title-page vignette. Illustrated with an additional 36 hand-colored aquatint plates plus many intertextual woodcut vignettes by I. R. and G. Cruikshank. Six pages of engraved music scores on three fold-out sheets. Black polished morocco, gilt- and blind-tooled panel, gilt-tooled spine decorations and lettering with six raised bands, tooled edges and returns. Marbled endpapers. AEG. First edition, first issue with the first music sheet unnumbered, p. 9 without footnote, and "good-bies" in the first line of p. 376.
Board corners bumped and rubbed through, covers scuffed and scratched, repair to the lower corner of p. 177, plates lack tissue guards thus facing leaves with offsetting, all others crisp and bright without markings. Very Good. Item #9525 Pierce Egan was an early model of the sports-journalist, capturing gin-besotted life in pre-Dickensian London with a rich writing style that mingled colloquial observations with refined, albeit orotund, prose. His work was largely forgotten until practitioners such as A. J. Liebling and Joseph Mitchell began to emulate and celebrate his work. Indeed, Egan coined the phrase the "sweet science" as a euphemism for boxing, a coinage Liebling used as the title to his lauded 1956 collection of boxing reportage. This is an especially well-preserved copy of the first issue, in a handsome binding with moderate wear.
A runaway success and still admired, especially for the Cruikshank illustrations, of London's high- and low-life. This was the Cruikshank's first major work.
Price: $700.00