The works of William Hogarth

Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, London, 1822.

Binding: 50 x 65.5 x 7 cm. Cloth on board, quartered with Morocco, gilt decorative rules, banded spine, two red title labels, some wear. Water-damaged and torn, this volume has been restored and re-bound in the late 1960’s, and is incomplete.

This is the edition of the complete works of William Hogarth produced by James Heath in 1822. Heath had restored the copper plates himself, re-cutting and deepening the lines and stipples, and after this edition, they were unworkable, so these are considered the last genuine ‘original’ prints.

William Hogarth 1697-1764 was the first English artist to win an international reputation. His father had experienced life as a ‘poor scholar’, doing hack work for publishers, running a (failed ) Latin-speaking coffee-house, spent five years in the debtor’s prison, and is thought to have fostered Hogarth’s lifelong distrust of publishers and print-sellers, despite working as an engraver.

In 1728 Hogarth reinvented himself as a painter, with the Beggar’s Opera being his earliest dated painting.  He embarked on painting humorous scenes of everyday life, beginning with A Harlot’s Progress (1731), and created a whole new genre of art, ‘pictorial dramas’ that combined narrative detail with an air of theatricality that fitted with the culture of the time, enabling him to reach a wide public through the means of engraving.

He followed up the success of this series with the eight pictures in A Rake’s Progress (1735), although he delayed the publication of the engravings until after the passing of the Copyright Act of 1735 (known as Hogarth’s Act), which provided him with some protection against pirates. The success of these two great series ensured that he was financially secure at this stage.

He became increasingly bitter at what he felt was his exclusion from high society and the art establishment, and began investigating what art might be about. This resulted in his treatise, The Analysis of Beauty (1753) in which he attempted to define the principles of beauty and grace which he saw as being realised in serpentine lines – which he termed ‘Lines of Beauty’.

The book got a hostile reception from his fellow artists, and became the subject of ridicule. In June 1757 he was appointed Serjeant-Painter to the King, an occasion of immense pride as he had received the stamp of royal approval and a guaranteed income of several hundred pounds a year. Despite this apparent success, he was increasingly falling out of step with the times.

James Heath (1757– 1834) was himself a highly successful English engraver, enjoying royal patronage and an associate engraver of the Royal Academy. His father was a bookbinder, and he was steeped in the book trade, illustrating many books and in 1802 publishing his own six-volume illustrated edition of Shakespeare. He later specialized in producing large plates, and kept a large number of apprentices. The year after this book was published, he retired from his profession and his stock of proofs and other engravings was sold in 1823.

Gaelic League Series, Simple Lessons in Irish

Gaelic League, Dublin, 1900.

Binding: 10.5 x 16.5 x 0.5 cm. Stapled, cover missing, hand-stitched repair.

O’Growney (1863-1899) was an Irish priest and scholar, and although not brought up in an Irish-speaking family or community, devoted himself to the Irish language on entering Maynooth in 1882, becoming  professor of Irish there in 1891. In 1893 was one of the founders of the Gaelic League, set up ‘for the purpose of keeping the Irish language spoken in Ireland’, and later became its vice-president until his death from TB.

Ceachta Beaga Gaedhilge II

Irish Book Company, Dublin, 1916.

Binding: 13.5 x 20.5 cm. Sewn paperback, 28pp, illustrations by Jack B. Yeats.

Many of the generation involved in the War for Independence, such as the McSwineys in Cork, learned their Irish through this book.

Norma Borthwick (also known as Nora) was a member of the executive of the Gaelic League, and took sides with Peadar Ó Laoghaire against MaNeill and others in the matter of preferring the colloquial dialect of Munster Gaelic over classical Irish. From Scotland, she claimed membership of the clan McDonald of the Isles on her mother’s side, and came to Kiltimagh in 1898 under the auspices of Lottie MacManus, the novelist and local Gaelic league organiser.

She was the director of the Irish Book Company, which produced this book, and so she was probably involved in commissioning the illustrations from Jack B. Yeats – which are not among his finest works, being quite typical of this kind of production.

Pádraic Mac Piarais

Iosagán agus Sgealta Eile

Connradh na Gaedhilge, Dublin (n.d.).

Binding: 10.5 x 16 x 1cm. Paperback, with colour illustrations by Beatrice Elvery.

Patrick Pearse (1879-1916) published Iosagán [Little Jesus] in 1907, and rewrote it as a play in 1910. This story was part of a self-conscious attempt to establish a prose style based in spoken rather than archaic, literary Gaelic, and in it Pearse explores the child’s world. Beatrice Elvery’s (1881-1970) pen and watercolour illustrations reflect the Art Nouveau aesthetic, and are similar in feel to many of Jack B. Yeats’ illustrations of the period. She was an Irish painter and stained-glass artist, and with her husband, Charles Campbell, 2^nd Baron Glenavy, she moved in the highest literary circles including Shaw, Yeats, D. H. Lawrence and Katherine Mansfield.

Síol Éabha

Lester, Dublin, 1921.

Binding: 13 x 19 x 1.3 cm. Blue board with tipped on title labels on front cover and spine, nearly detached.

The full title of this nicely produced book is Siol Éabha: Sgéalta ó Láimh Phádraic Ó  Conaire, and it is a collection of short stories by this pioneer  of the Irish Literary Revival. Ó Conaire and Pearse are regarded as the two most important Irish language short story writers of this period. Ó Conaire left his family in London in 1914, and moved to Galway, where  he earned a meagre living through writing, teaching at Gaeltacht summer schools, and as an occasional organiser for the Gaelic League.

Pádraic Mac Piarais

An Mháthair

W. Tempest, Dundalgan Press, Dundalk, 2^nd edn., 1927.

Binding: 12.5 x 18.5 x1 cm. Green paperback, illustrated.

This collection of short stories, some of which had been previously published, was put together by Pearse in November 1915, and published in early 1916. This edition has a vocabulary and added anonymous illustrations which echo the religious sentimentality and deliberate idealisation on Pearse’s stories, which are mostly set in a fictionalised Rosmuc.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Illustrated by Arthur Rackham, Heinemann, London. 1911

This is the second edition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare illustrated by the great Arthur Rackham (1867 – 1939) and contains 40 colour plates and 34 line drawings and is considered one of his masterpieces.

Rackham is perhaps the greatest book illustrator of the early 20th century and is particularly known for his children’s book illustrations.

Don Quixote

Cassell, Petter & Galpin, London. (illustrated by Gustave Doré),1867

Cloth binding, gold lettering

Published in quarto format by Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, London around 1867, this is the second edition Don Quixote, the first in a single volume. The 9.5 pound monster has approximately 750 pages and contains 370 illustrations.

Doré was a prolific illustrator in the latter half of the 19th century. His depictions of the Don Quixote and his squire, Sancho Panza, have become so famous that they have influenced subsequent readers, artists, and stage and film directors’ ideas of the physical “look” of the two characters.

Subsidium Animabus in Purgatorio Luentibus

J. B. Mayr, Salzburg, 1677.

Binding: 9.5 x 15.5 x 3.5 cm. Parchment binding with clasps, red handwritten title label, blue paper edges, decorative title page, head and tailpieces throughout.

This beautifully bound little book discusses topics seen as important for orthodox Catholics in the seventeenth century, such as the location of Purgatory and what can be done for the people in it, as well as  the issue of intentions in the use of indulgences.

Laurentius Keppler (1602-1688) was a Jesuit from Munich, who taught grammar and rhetoric, and was rector in Regensburg and Ingolstadt. In 1668 the printer of this book, Johann Baptist Mayr (1634-1703), was appointed printer to the Court and Academy by the Fürsterzbischof (Prince-bishop) Max Gandolf, patron of the famous library in the  Neue Residenz in Salzburg. [pics: SLB 001-004]

for Hartley, Turner and Hodgson, London, 1701.

Binding: 12 x 19 x 3 cm. Calf, banded spine, coloured title label.

A collection of belles lettres, ranging from classic authors such as St. Jerome, Cato Uticensis (Cato the Younger), Aurelian the Emperor (Marcus Aurelius), and Queen Zenobia, to ‘a large collection of original letters of love and friendship. Written, by several gentlemen and ladies’ – light entertainment in the early eighteenth century. [pics: JM2 047-8]