EARLY JUVENILE - SPURIN, E.C. (author). The Juvenile Scrap Book. London; Royal Juvenile Library, and Repository, 37 New Bond Street, London Circa 1850.
Landscape small folio; publisher's pebble-grained purplish cloth boldly lettered gilt to upper cover; ff. 24; with wood-engraved title-page and a total of 19 attractive full-size engraved images (almost all featuring a great many separate images, with engraved titles or captions), all with original attractive and neat original handcolouring and all retaining the original linen backing, with integral blank and unused linen sheets; the scrapbook sound and pleasing, externally faded with wear, sometime neatly rebacked retaining 5/6 of the original spine which is carefully reincorporated, aided by some professional Japanese-tissue strengthening, wear to corners exposing same-coloured board, abrasions to edges with pulled threads, inner hinges cracked but holding, foxing to original endpapers, which are retained in the recasing process, internally generally very good, clean and sound with the expected age-toning to stock and some occasional light and inoffensive foxing.
Sole edition. A fascinating survival and a window into the social history of the day, unlocated on the commercial market, and apparently unlisted on COPAC or WorldCat. This commercially published, and substantial, clothbound scrapbook invites the owner to assemble a personalised collection of engravings, or scraps, a wide variety of which was widely available on the retail market, to feed a popular pastime of the Victorian period. The publisher E.C. Spurin, late Edlin, was also a retailer and General Repository for Articles of Instruction & Amusement etc., located at 37, New Bond Street. They supplied to the Queen and the Royal Family.
The engravings included carry a variety of imprints: E.C. Edlin, No. 37, New Bond Street (the precursor to E.C. Spurin); John Betts, 115 Strand and Dean & Co., Threadneedle Street. The attractive plates include one with ten individual handcoloured images with the overall caption "Australia & Polynesia" and include scenes in the Sandwich Islands, of the Aborigines of Australia; Hunting the Kangaroo; A Sheep Farm in Australia; Hut in the Island of Tahiti; A New Zealand Chief and A Missionary At One of the South Sea Islands.
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