Cloth binding for ‘Poems and Pictures’

1860

Sand cloth gilt

9¾ x 6¾ inches

This is a reprint of James Burns’s famous book of 1846. The text is made up of traditional verse accompanied by Germanic rustic illustration of the 1840s; the edition of 1860 imposes a neo-classical cover with no awareness of its jarring irrelevance and happily misleads the contemporary buyer by presenting the volume as if it were new and up-to-date. It was often the case that unrelated but showy covers were used to give a tired book a market uplift, endlessly refreshing old imprints by repackaging them as if they were novelties.

Scan and text by Simon Cooke [Click on image to enlarge it, and mouse over the text for links.]

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