The Englishman's Mentor: The Picture of the Palais Royal... GEORGE CRUIKSHANK Illustrations Literature

(CRUIKSHANK, GEORGE). The Englishman's Mentor: The Picture of the Palais Royal... London: Printed for William Hone, Ludgate Hill, 1819. FIRST EDITION, 12mo (about 4" x 6"), uncut fore and bottom edges, top edge gilt), bound in deep red morocco with gilt-ruled borders by Riviere and Son (signed on lower front dentelle), gilt-printing on spine with title, author, and date. The spine has been tastefully re-backed with original (Riviere) spine laid over. Hand-colored folding engraved plate by George Cruikshank titled Picture of the Palais Royal-Paris (measuring about 5¾ x 16¾ in.) with a few small splits with no loss. Title page printed in black and red, verso of front end-page has old bookseller's clipped catalogue description for this book; 200 pp. including 6 pp. ads in rear, two front blanks have some chipping along edges, insignificant small stain in upper left corner of title page & subsequent five pages. This copy has an important bonus - the original two drab stiff paper covers, and blue publisher's pebbled cloth spine with printed paper label, are each bound in the rear (all in nice condition). Quite a lovely copy. The title page of this work lists the goings-on at the Palais Royal: "Describing its spectacles, gaming rooms, coffee houses, restaurateurs, tabagies, reading rooms, milliners' shops, gamesters, sharpers, mouchards, artistes, epicures, courtesans, filles, and other remarkable objects in that high change of the fashionable dissipation and vice of Paris with characteristic sketches and anecdotes of its frequenters and inhabitants." The British Museum describes Cruikshank's image as, "A scene in the arcades of the Palais Royal, whose pillars form a background. A promenade: courtesans accost and are accosted by dandies, civil and military. Men seated on chairs read newspapers. A woman with a small child tries her luck at a gambling machine (left). A grotesque-looking man performs on the bladder and string, an instrument burlesquing the 'cello'." References: Cohn, Albert M. George Cruikshank, A Catalogue Raisonne, # 274.