The Caricatures of James Gillray; with Historical and Political Illustrations, and Compendious Biographical Anecdotes and Notices

[London: John Miller, 1824. Oblong folio. (9 5/16 x 13 1/4 inches). 164 pp. Illustrated with 85 hand-colored etched plates on 81 leaves, four of which are folding; errata slip at p. 147. (Page 164 ends in the middle of a sentence, no more having been published). Full brown morocco by Rivière with gilt border, spine in six compartments richly gilt, all nine cream printed parts wrappers bound in (part one front wrapper used as a title-page, the rest bound at the rear), top edge gilt, others uncut

Provenance: Bookplate with the Skeet family arms on the front pastedown

A posthumous collected edition of Gillray's caricatures, bringing together eighty-five hand-coloured satires with explanatory letterpress, presenting a concentrated survey of the caricaturist's political and social satire and commentary on British public life from the era of the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars.

The present collected edition of Gillray's caricatures brings together a substantial selection of the artist's satirical prints accompanied by explanatory and contextual descriptive text. The selection includes many of Gillray's best-known subjects, addressing British political life, the culture of print and satire, and the social habits of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Parliamentary figures, royal imagery, and questions of national identity appear alongside scenes of domestic life and fashionable society. Well-known compositions present in the series include The Plumb-pudding in Danger, a political satire on imperial rivalry; Tiddy-Doll, the Great French Gingerbread Baker, treating the reshaping of Europe; The Valley of the Shadow of Death, an allegorical scene of conflict and alliance; The Spanish Bull Fight, a political metaphor cast as spectacle among other political and social satires. Other plates extend Gillray's observations to popular entertainments and contemporary manners. The accompanying text frames these images within a broader account of satire and public opinion, situating Gillray's work within the literary and political culture of his time. As one of the earliest substantial attempts to gather Gillray's dispersed prints into book form, the Miller edition reflects early nineteenth-century efforts to preserve and interpret his satirical output in a collected format.

Hill, Mr. Gillray, the Caricaturist, a Biography (1965).