Bell's Life in London, Sporting Chronicle. Combining, with the News of the Week, A rich Repository of Fashion, Wit, and Humour and the Interesting Incidents of Real Life

London, 1832. 1p. broadside advertisement illustrated with seven woodcut vignettes including scenes of boxing, hunting, racing, shooting, and cricket. 1 vols. 12 x 8 inches. Folds. Backed with japanese tissue, a few minor chips and edge tears, minor soiling. 1p. broadside advertisement illustrated with seven woodcut vignettes including scenes of boxing, hunting, racing, shooting, and cricket. 1 vols. 12 x 8 inches. Bell's Life in London was a rival to Pierce Egan's Life in London and Sporting Guide, an offshoot of his highly successful book. Egan began his periodical in 1824 as a Sunday weekly, and in 1826 asked Cruikshank to design some wood engravings to head the paper's regular features, which increased its circulation. Some Cruikshank designs were subsequently used, without the artist's consent, by Bell's paper, and in 1827 Egan, unable to achieve the success of his competitor, sold out to Bell, who merged the two journals into one. Bell's was a conspicuous success: it sold as many as sixteen thousand copies weekly to the poorest classes and continued into the 1880s

This advertisement denotes the work published at "the Office, 169, Strand, every Saturday Afternoon, at Four o'Clock" and includes a note that "A new edition of Part I. and Part II. of 'The Gallery of Comicalities' is reprinted ... and now republished on two large sheets, which are sold separately." The Gallery of Comicalities (illustrated by Cruikshank) permits the broadside to be dated to 1831/1832, when parts I and II werre issued; parts III-VIII were issued from 1833 to ca. 1840.

A nice broadside from the early years of the paper.