Doctor Syntax in Paris or A Tour in Search of the Grotesque

London: Printed for W. Wright, 1820. Syntax Abroad: The Grotesque Tourist in Paris
A Spirited Imitation of the Rowlandson - Combe Tradition, with Fine Hand-Colored Aquatints

[COMBE, William]. Doctor Syntax in Paris or A Tour in Search of the Grotesque. A Humorous & Satirical Poem. London: Printed for W. Wright, 1820.

First edition. Octavo (9 3/16 x 5 3/4 inches; 234 x 146 mm.). [iii]-viii, 318 pp. Eighteen hand-colored aquatint plates (including frontispiece and vignette title) after Charles Williams. Plates watermarked 1819.

Handsomely bound in early twentieth-century three-quarter red morocco over marbled boards by Zaehnsdorf (stamp-signed on the verso of the front free endpaper). Spine elaborately tooled and lettered in gilt in compartments, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. Spine lightly faded still a bright, clean, and unusually well-preserved copy.

William Combe (1741-1823) " is particularly remembered for the verses that he wrote to accompany Rowlandson's coloured plates and drawings of the adventures of 'Dr Syntax'. The first of these works, The Tour of Dr Syntax in Search of the Picturesque, a parody of the popular books of picturesque travels of the day, and particularly of the works of Gilpin, appeared in Ackermann's Poetical Magazine in 1809, and in 1812 as a book which went into many editions. Dr Syntax is the grotesque figure of a clergyman and schoolmaster, who sets out during the holidays, on his old horse Grizzle, to 'make a TOUR and WRITE IT', and meets with a series of absurd misfortunes. This was followed in 1820 by The Second Tour of Dr Syntax in Search of Consolation (for the loss of his wife) and in 1821 by The Third Tour of Dr Syntax in Search of a Wife. The three Tours were collected in 1826. Combe also wrote the letterpress for Rowlandson's The English Dance of Death (1815-16), The Dance of Life (1816), and Johnny Quae Genus (1822), another Syntax story" (The Oxford Companion to English Literature).

"The good-natured moralising schoolmaster became a public character and a general favourite. Syntax was the popular title of the day, and shop windows displayed Syntax hats, Syntax wigs, and Syntax coats...Its success produced a host of parodies and spurious imitations. Among them the best perhaps is the Tour of Dr. Syntax through London, with twenty plates, published in 1820....Other imitations were Syntax in Paris, which appeared in 1820, with seventeen plates; and the Tour of Dr. Prosody in Search of the Antique, etc., in 1821, with twenty plates by W. Read" (Martin Hardie, p. 168).

"The author of the text [of Doctor Syntax in Paris] is unknown, but, although this is manifestly in plates and general style a Syntax imitation, the text might conceivably be genuinely by Combe" (Abbey, Travel).

Charles Williams (fl. 1797-1830) "was the chief caricaturist for Fores, the printseller and was a follower and copyist of James Gillray. His early work is published under the name 'Ansell' but the later is usually anonymous" (Houfe, The Dictionary of 19th Century British Book Illustrators, p. 348).

Abbey, Travel, 109; Martin Hardie, pp. 168 and 317; Tooley 432.