Emblems of Mortality: Representing Death Seizing all Ranks and Degrees of People

Very good copy of a pirate edition of the John Bewick woodcuts

Rare copy of this delightful Georgian oddity

(Listed by Francis Douce as example "XII," chapter 8, page 119, The Dance of Death, 1833.)

With 51 woodcuts in a distinctive octagonal frame.

Bewick's copy of Holbein's Dance of Death was published by his mentor T. Hodgson in 1793. The woodcuts were re-used for new editions in 1795 and 1801 by printer Robert Bassam, and were probably destroyed in a fire in his printshop in 1803.

The plates here include a version of Bewick's original frontispiece with numerous skeletons leading royalty and aristocracy out of a castle town to a grave. The cuts are an amusing mix of medieval costumes, religiously copying Holbein and Hollar for the royal and clerical figures, and the Georgian, depicting modern gents in bicorne hats, coats, gilet waistcoats, and breeches, and ladies in elegant gowns with ostrich plumes in their hair.

According to Douce, "Emblems of Mortality, Printed for Whittingham and Arliss, Juvenile Library, Paternoster Row, 12mo. The frontispiece and the rest of the cuts, with two exceptions, from the same blocks as used for the last-mentioned edition [XI The Dance of Death… on wood by Mr. Bewick, London, William Charlton Wright]. The preface, with very slight variations, is abridged from that by Mr [John Sidney] Hawkins in VIII [sic] (actually X, the T. Hodgson edition of 1789) and the descriptive verses altogether the same as those in that edition. Both (XI and XII) seem intended for popular and juvenile use. It will be immediately perceived that the title page is erroneous in confounding the Basel Dance of Death with that in the volume itself." Douce criticized both the Wright (XI) and Whittingham (XII) editions saying, "the cuts, if Bewick's, very inferior to those in his other works" and "ridiculously modernized."

According to the exhaustive Dance of Death website dodedans.com, the many pirate editions of "Mr. Bewick's" designs that appeared in the early 19th century were re-cut by other engravers. The artist of these woodcuts was probably Luke Clenell, 1781-1840, a young apprentice of Thomas Bewick who also illustrated Cries of London and London Melodies, but the truth remains elusive. (The printer Whittingham had worked with Thomas Bewick previously and printed his Fables 1801, and Natural History of the most Remarkable quadrupeds, etc., 1825.)

Armorial bookplate of slave-owner Edmund Broderip Jr. of Wells, died 1847. Awarded 4,210 pounds in restitution for the loss of 168 enslaved persons on his Revolution Hall Estate plantation, Grenada, in 1836.

Ink signature on front endpaper of "R[obert] N. Green-Armytage, Bath," died 1966, an English lawyer and book collector.

A previous owner has written in pencil "1814 Fake Bewick" on the front flypaper, but the Wright edition only appeared in 1825, it seems likely to be mid 1820s at the earliest.

In half leather with gilt title on spine, corners rubbed, marble boards scuffed and worn, all edges marbled, marble endpapers, interior fresh and bright with clean white paper, good crisp and dark impressions of the woodcuts.